


The Traitors of Olympus I: The Whispers of a Snake

by jflashandcrash



Series: The Traitors of Olympus [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon Related, F/M, M/M, Minor Nico di Angelo/Will Solace, Multi, Original Character(s), Warning: Dosage of Half Naked Guys and Cute Weasels Every So Often, solangelo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-05-17 17:42:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 96,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5879875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jflashandcrash/pseuds/jflashandcrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ajax Pax and his half-brother Axel (both former members of Kronos' army) are trying to gain the trust of the members of Camp Half-Blood to stop a crazed half-blood from becoming a god. When Rachel, the oracle, gets kidnapped and Phobetor, the God of Nightmares, starts to mess with their dreams and the dreams of other campers, Axel and Pax realize they're dealing with more than just a crazed half-blood. With occasional help from Will Solace and Nico Di Angelo, Axel and Pax need to team up with Kally,a daughter of Apollo, Calex, a son of Eros, and two daughters of Demeter to save Rachel and stop Phobetor before the nightmares he's casting become real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kalypso, An Argonaut Crushes My Chem Partner

One: Kalypso

An Argonaut Crushes My Chem Partner

 

Everything was fantastic in detention until a Renaissance biker gang showed up and Kally was set on fire.

Kally couldn’t be certain they _were_ members of a biker gang, but they certainly looked like it. She’d had so little sleep in the past month, she wouldn’t be shocked if she’d passed out on the lab desk—beside the Bunsen burner—and dreamed the two boys into the hallway. With all the nightmares she’d been having, the stress was probably getting to her.

Before she saw the boys in the hallway, Kally was redoing a D lab paper for Mr. Paine’s chemistry class. Yea, that was his name and he’d earned it. Mr. Paine was “gracious” enough to let her have a partner, some cheerleader that transferred in a week ago. Kally thought improving a test score with someone else who failed the test was a little counterintuitive but she was too shy to point that out to Mr. Paine.

“Watch it, graphite brain!” Tabby? Tami? Tuba? snapped when Kally almost spilled some of the alkaline salts.

Kally jumped and reflexively pushed her writing journal and messenger bag further away from the cheerleader. Tammi struck her as the kind of person that would _accidentally_ knock the Bunsen burner onto Kally’s stuff, because Tammi was having a bad day.

“Ms. Cassand and Tammi, focus on your experiment. Your mothers wouldn’t like another call from me,” Mr. Paine growled from the front. Really, the words seemed to float from behind a folded copy of  _Reader's Digest_. The middle aged man crouched behind the magazine and desk like he was a general calling orders from a fortification.

Kally frowned. Her mother wouldn’t notice another call from Mr. Paine. The only one who ever noticed when her grades were slipping was her best friend, Merry, and she was absent today. That might have been normal for any other kid to skip a test day, but not Merry. Had she been around, Tammi might have thought twice about picking on Kally.

She wondered if Mr. Paine had heard anything about Merry. When Kally glanced up again, she expected him to be glowering from behind his barricade. Instead, he sat up, alert. His eyes narrowed towards the open door. One of his callused hands rested atop the gilded Argonaut statue he kept on his desk.

That’s when she saw the two boys in the hall. They were carrying a guitar case and a lacrosse bag. The one with the guitar case looked old enough to be a senior. He was tall with bronze skin, short cropped black hair, and the wisps of a goatee. He wore jeans, a military surplus jacket, and a tight T-shirt that read  _Ares checks his closet for me before he can sleep at night._ White paint, like war paint, streaked his face.

Kally felt her jaw drop. He had a _machete_ in his other hand.

Lacrosse Boy looked closer to Kally's age. He was paler than the other. His jagged raven hair flowed wildly about his wicked smile. Though she couldn't tell from this distance, one eye looked lighter than the other. He wore a leather duster jacket and a pair of combat boots that might have once been black. Kally briefly remembered her priest describing Satan as a handsome, dark man that knocked on lady's doors at night in the Medieval Era. She trembled. Though likely not Satan, these two definitely looked like something from _Dice & Drakens_ or _Mythomagic…_ if those characters had hopped out of the game to attack a Virginia high school.

In his other hand, the Lacrosse boy held a golden apple. He waved it at her.

Once they had the teacher's attention, they turned to walk down the hallway.

Mr. Paine stood. Hesitantly, he released his statue. "Girls," his voice was tight. "Stay here. I'm going to lock the door behind me. If I don't come back in five minutes, leave through the window."

Kally wanted to protest. That was not the procedure for a lockdown; they had plenty of practice drills since they lived so close to the Capitol. But Mr. Paine was a teacher. He was supposed to know what was best, right?

He riffled in his desk until he withdrew a folded fishing pole.  _A fishing pole?_  Kally wasn’t a weapons expert, but—in the battle of machete versus stick—she was putting her snack money on something sharp and pointy.

Tammi flinched.

Their teacher stepped to the door. He pulled a mirror from his pocket and angled the reflective glass to glance down the hall. His precision made it look routine. Kally had to wonder how often Mr. Paine chased random vagabonds through the school with random fishing poles. She hoped he wasn’t going to get himself killed.

Before she could protest, he darted out and the door thumped after him.

Tammi freaked out, but not in the way Kally expected. She whirled on her, scowling. "Styx,” she snarled like a curse. “Were those demigods your friends?"

"What—no!"

Kally had never seen those boys in her life. Though the other students often called her a freak and teased her for being into tabletop games, it wasn't like she knew every person who looked like a _Dice & Drakins_ player. And demigods? What was Tammi talking about?

"You’re going to try something, aren’t you?" Tammi persisted. The taller girl took a step closer to Kally, who reflexively stepped back. Tammi huffed in irritation. "I just found this school! You even have a division one cheerleading squad—"

"There's competition for cheerleading?" Kally asked, confused.

"Of course there is! And I'm not planning on missing it. Plus, The Champ Knights have  _great_ school spirit and really hot football players! So, I suggest you find a way to get expelled before I expel you." For a moment, Kally thought the girl's dark eyes had shimmered to a deep crimson.

"E—Excuse me?" Eloquent, Kally knew, but she could feel her heartbeat thumping in her arteries. She'd never felt physically threatened by another student before. Now, she really wished Mr. Paine would storm back in the room with his crazy fishing pole and yell at them to get back to failing their test.

"Don't play dumb with me half-blood. I know Python wants you alive, but I don't answer to him." Tammi's rage leached the color from her face, paling her to printing-paper-white. "Were those boys your back up? You're going to need them."

A jiggling came from the doorknob. Kally didn't have to time to glance over before Tammi lunged at her. One foot made a distinct  _clack_.

Kally stumbled backwards, toward the front of the room. The beautiful cheerleader had melted into something that belonged in a Creepypasta, between Slenderman and Ticci Toby. Her hair flickered to a red. Her canine teeth elongated into two white blades atop her lips. Another  _clack._  From under Tammi's skirt, a prosthetic bronze limb clanked beside an—an equestrian leg? Kally guaranteed those didn't come from the Spook and Fright Halloween store.

"Come here so we can make this quick. I don't want your blood ruining my skirt," Tammi growled.

Frantic, Kally fumbled along Mr. Paine's desk for something to throw. The Argonaut's sword tip bit her palm. As she threw the bust, the metal smoothed. An acrimonious reek stung the air. Smoke smoldered from the gold. In a flash, the metal spun into a perfect, golden Frisbee.

From there, everything happened too fast.

Tammi hissed and ducked. The metal discus stuck harmlessly into the motivational poster behind her, cutting Wittgenstein's quote "If a lion could speak, we couldn't understand him" in half.

The classroom door slammed open. A black cylinder rolled into the room before popping into a bright light.  _Bang_!

Both Tammi and Kally shrieked and covered their eyes.

The fire alarm screamed.

"Pax Extraction Team to the rescue!" a male bellowed like the jingle of a furniture commercial.

Someone grabbed Kally's arm. She thrashed, terrified it was the monster. Lights danced in her eyes and her ears buzzed. Whoever this was lifted her like a stack of books with barely a grunt. When her vision started to clear, she could see the guitar case boy with the  _Ares_  shirt. He had picked her up bridal style. There was no guitar case, but now weapons covered him like lights on a very bright Christmas tree: daggers, knives, and other blades popped out of straps all over his body. The hilt of a hoplite sword dug pins into her side as he sprinted to the window.

Kally felt like an idiotic damsel. Relief flushed her when he set her on the counter beside the window. A foot away, the discus still stuck out from the poster. She jerked it free.

"Axel!" he shouted and pointed to himself. Well, it didn't sound like a shout to Kally, but she could tell it was from the tremor of his mouth. He must have blown things up a lot to know she'd be deaf. Then she noticed his giant red headphones that read  _Hephaestus Headphones: Hammering Your Ears._

Over his shoulder, Kally could see Tammi circling the Lacrosse boy. He twirled two bronze daggers between them. Under his long coat, he wore a bronze breastplate.

Tammi had a confident smile now that she had blinked away her blindness. "You're cute demigod. You can lower those weapons. I'd much rather kiss and make up."

"Are you trying to charm talk me baby?" The Lacrosse boy gave her a brilliant smile, tilting one dagger towards his ear. "Can't hear you over the sound of Orpheus metal!"

Tammi's hand lashed out. She snagged the yellow wire dangling down to his belt and pulled. His headphones tore off.

A  _thunk_ sounded beside Kally and she felt a burst of cool, autumn air. Axel had kicked open the window. Upon hearing the Lacrosse kid grunt in panic, he glanced over. "Ajax!" Axel snarled, "Stop telling people our weakness while we're still fighting them!"

The Lacrosse boy whimpered. Tammi hissed something rated a little less than PG to him. To Kally's disgust and horror, his daggers dipped. It was almost like the noxious sweetness of the monster's voice weighed them to the floor.

Tammi took the opportunity. In the manner of a gross donkey Nosferatu, she lunged for his neck. Lacrosse boy stood, paralyzed, listing his head slightly in confusion.

Axel blurred in the room's florescent lighting. He jammed his arm in the way of the other boy’s neck. Tammi's fangs sunk down. Blood splattered from his army jacket. His other hand had clasped a stainless steel sword, something she might see in an anime, from his back. He slashed the blade clean through Tammi's neck.

Dust exploded through the room then roared in a hot vortex back to Tammi's body. She gargled a laugh, "Steel? You think steel will work?!"

Her face had crumbled, but so had the blade. Black dust piled back to her like the image was playing in reverse. The inside of Tammi's throat throbbed as she spoke, repiecing together arteries and muscles.

Axel didn't stop. He shoved Lacrosse boy back toward Kally, ripping another blade—a knife—from his belt. He did a double strike, dashing apart her jaw again, then her arm. His knife bent with the second swipe.

Lacrosse boy staggered, clutching at his head. He coughed out some of the thick dust that was spinning in the air with each of Axel's hits. Kally had to wonder,  _if those dust pieces are Tammi, are we breathing monster dust? Is it cancerous?_

Blearily, Lacrosse Boy glanced at Kally, "Your discus…" he said, "throw it."

Her discus? Kally hadn't realized she'd been standing there, stupidly, with a perfect weapon.  _And next up on our Youtube channel: Kalypso Cassand does absolutely nothing!_ She wanted Lacrosse boy to throw the weapon. She didn't trust her aim. More likely than not, she'd knock Axel in the head and give him an Olympic sized concussion. But Lacrosse boy was still shaking his head groggily and Axel was running out of weapons. Each blade broke on or shortly after contact.

The gold hummed in her hands, feeling natural and light. It looked like it should be heavy, but she hefted her arm up effortlessly. She threw the discus.

The metal spit smoke again, mixing with the black sand as it spun. Tammi didn't think another attack would come from their direction. She didn't duck.

Her entire body exploded into the black dust, powdering Axel. Instead of swirling like before, it settled in a thin film over his hair and jacket.

He recoiled in disgust, shuddering. "Eugh," he shook his arms away from his body, "That never stops being gross."

"She seemed pretty half-assed, didn't she?' Lacrosse Boy asked after fully gaining his composure. He slid his daggers into leather sheathes along his utility belt. "Get it? Because she had a donkey leg?"

From Axel's patient stare, Kally guessed this was normal. Instead of giving a real response, he picked up the discus and handed it to her. "We've got minutes before the fire trucks show up," Axel stated, tugging his headphones off. He frowned, sizing Kally up.

Today was a laundry day, so Kally knew she didn't look like much: exercise shorts, lime green sneakers and an OBX sweatshirt, all fashionably accented in monster residue. The layers of her hair had tumbled from her hair tie, spraying her face with strawberry blond splashes. She squirmed under his examination, thinking about how his hands had blurred like a hurricane while slashing Tammi to—well—dust. If that had really happened, she wondered if she'd burst into black sand under his attacks.

"Again, we're the Pax Extraction Team," he said, "and, if you wanna live through the night, you're going to want to come with us."

* * *

 

Author's Note: Hey guys! Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed :D

I'm in the process of editing  _Whispers of a Snake_ so the chapters might be a little disjointed for a bit. For those of you who have already read it—there are no major plot changes! Just smoothing everything out. For those of you who are new, welcome! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter and will continue the rest of the series.

The _Traitors of Olympus_ series (this series) takes places after _Heroes of Olympus_ and before _Trials of Apollo_. It is not canon to _Trials of Apollo_ , since I plotted out the series and wrote _Whispers of a Snake_ and _Blood of a Mayan_ before I read _The Hidden Oracle ._ However, you will still see Riordan’s beloved original characters in here, as canon as possible to _Heroes of Olympus_! I hope you enjoy and that you can take this adventure with me, Kally, and the Pax brothers! :D    

 


	2. Kalypso: How to Insult a Satyr in Five Words or Less

 Two: Kalypso

How to Insult a Satyr in Five Words or Less

 

Because of the fire alarm, Champ High School's sport teams were clustered in the field behind the school. Despite the football and soccer coaches' attempts to bark them into neat lines, they were laughing and shoving around the band kids. Everyone assumed this was an annoying start-of-the-year drill. When they heard the sirens, they started "oooooo"ing that someone had pulled the fire alarm.

Kally grabbed her messenger bag and was careful not to crush her back-up glasses case with the newly added discus. Outside the chemistry lab's window, she was baffled to find the guitar and lacrosse cases. With routine quickness and minimal explanation, the Pax boys packed their weapons and lead Kally to a van by the reserved spaces for seniors.

She couldn't believe no one stopped them when these two crawled from the window with more weapons than a Call of Duty cosplayer. Besides the gear, their work van was conspicuous. They had painted over a pharmacy or insurance logo with kindergarten bright letters:

_Pax Extraction Team_

_Ajax , Axel, ~~Alabaster~~_

_Discounts on Protection Today!_

Cracks and holes dented the doors and bumper, though probably not from a car accident or soccer ball. She could imagine it now,  _Hey, yea… does my insurance cover a minotaur collision?_ Paint sloppily blotted out parts of the last name. Kally decided not to ask. She had too many other important questions.

"What did you do to Mr. Paine?" she asked. They weren't going any further until she made sure her teacher was alright. Whether she liked him or not, he was innocent of whatever happened with Tammi. She made a mental note to ask what happened with Tammi next. “Mr…” she hesitated.

“Augh,” he said, grabbing his chest like she’d mortally wounded him. “No with the ‘Mr.’ I’m younger than you. And it’s Pax. Only family and special people get to call me Ajax. I can’t go by it because everyone mixes up Axel’s and my names.” He waved a hand in the air. “Too many A’s, too many X’s, and too much awesome.”

Kally was pretty sure ‘Pax and Axel’ were just as easy to mix up as ‘Ajax and Axel,’ but she decided not to point out semantics to the guy with all the weapons.

Axel sighed like he’d heard this several hundred times before.

After the brief introduction that answered none of her questions, Pax perked up. "About that guy—that’s not really his name right? Mr. Paine. Ha! Ha! Though man, a fishing pole that turns into a bow is a super cool idea—"

"We locked the ex-Roman legionnaire in the boys' bathroom," Axel explained while swinging the back doors of the van open. The stench of unwashed laundry and stale Doritos blasted Kally. She gagged. At least she knew the boys were resourceful in more than just battle: they used their van as a transport vehicle  _and_  a trashcan. Chip bags, soda cans and various articles of clothing clustered the floor where seats should have been. Benches lined either side of the van—Mystery Machine style—with ancient equipment strapped on the caramel cushions: a type writer, a telegraph, a sword rack with at least a dozen weapons of various color and origin. Two metal bins sat behind the driver's seat with thin cords wrapped around. A trunk was strapped to the back of the passenger's seat with two helmets on top.

One was a bronze, Greek style helmet—like something she'd seen in 300 or Spartacus. Try as her parents might, Kally excelled at sneaking in to watch whatever videos her older siblings watched. The metal was ribbed like scales. Instead of angling straight down, the helmet expanded near the cheeks and narrowed at the mouth to make a diamond shape. Two fangs protruded from the ends.

Axel hopped in before she could check out the other one.

As he weaved through the junk, he continued, "We figured it would keep him out of danger."

"Ex-legionnaire…" Kally echoed, her bag suddenly feeling heavy. "Roman?"

"Oh yea!" Pax grinned and pat her on the back. "You're a demigod. Greek and Roman mythology is real—except that nonsense you hear about Xena. She was hot but she—"

"Ajax," Axel prompted. He unloaded the weapons from the guitar case. He dumped all the broken pieces into the far metal bins. It looked like it was overflowing with fragments.

"Right." Pax shrugged and sped on like he was reading a warning label. "Sorry, godly or titanly parents: often cause ADHD, dyslexia, and death. Now, before you ask, if you're a Christian or a Muslim, we don't know anything about the big man in the sky—well, the not-Zeus big man in the sky. Don't get us started on that jerk." The chilly breeze whipped the ends of his long duster jacket. He smacked them down, unhindered. "But hey, nothing says this stuff isn't compatible with other religions, right?"

_Except the Qu'ran, the Torah, and the Bible_. Kally decided now was not the time for a religious argument either.

"So now noob, once you know you're a demigod, you might start to notice some startling changes. They might frighten you. Don't worry. They're completely normal. More monsters will try to kill you. When you tell your friends, most of those mortals—a few exceptional excluded—will tell you that the near-death experience of being a demigod is awesome and ask when monsters can try to kill them. You'll tell them, ‘you're idiots. Dying hurts.’ Then you'll run away from home to preserve the lives of your family and friends and seek out refuge in Camp Jupiter or Camp… Camp…"

"Half-Blood," Axel supplied. He finished unloading Pax's lacrosse bag and wiggled into the front seat.

Pax nodded grimly. "Thanks. There used to be other options but um… well, anyway, either wolves or a satyr would usually take you to one of these camps, but you lucked into the—" He pumped out his chest, breast plate gleaming. "—Pax Extraction Team!"

Kally's head spun. In the distance, she could hear the whine of sirens. "So… you're expecting me to come with you to..?"

"Camp Half- Blood." He grinned.

"And..?"

"Train to become a demigod warrior? I don't honestly know what happens in the camp. We're from the West Coast, so we only ever got a tourist’s visit. But yea, something cool like that." Pax crawled through the mess into the passenger seat. His head popped over the headrest, eyes crinkled.

Kally gasped.

One eye was dark like Axel's. The other was cat-yellow.

He batted his lashes, clearly aware of what she'd noticed. "So, what will it be?"

Axel looked at her in the rearview mirror, "You'll need to decide before the sirens get louder. Camp Half-Blood or eminent death-by-monsters?"

 

* * *

 

 

There were no seatbelts in the back. She gripped the seat, the voice of her valkyrie-like driver's ed teacher scolding her internally. The deep breath Kally had taken before she entered hadn't prepared her for the encompassing stench. The opened windows didn't help. To distract herself, she glanced around. One of the bins contained the remains of broken stainless steel weapons, almost filled. The other only had a few fragments of bent metal but all of it was either bronze or gold.

Her eyes fell back to the helmets. The one she couldn't see earlier was turned backwards. She picked it up.

This one looked more like something she'd seen in her Latin class. The plumes erupting from the top were a burnt gold. They split at the base as though to tumble on either side of the wearer's shoulders. Similar to the other, the cheek area puffed out, but with whiskers instead of scales. The overall effect was feline. Inside, there were markings.

_XXVII pro leonis caput_

_27 for the lion's head… what could that mean?_

"Don't touch that!"

Kally jumped, dropping the helmet with a  _clang_. Fortunately, the trash cushioned the fall.

Pax leaned over the seat towards her. He shot a panicked glance at Axel, whose eyes were on the road. Upon seeing his concentration, Pax relaxed. "It could be cursed or something."

She didn't think that was what he wanted to say, but she put the helmet back on the trunk. She thought she heard a squeak come from inside. "How did you find me?" she asked, warily staring at the wooden box. Maybe the curse involved making her hear rodent sounds.

"My mom!" Pax said. "She said there would be two half-bloods on this trip. By the way, you're taking all this exceptionally well."

Everything they said fit with Kally's nightmares. After two months or so of severe insomnia, she would do anything to stop them. She wasn’t ready to talk about those nightmares though.  "I'm pretty convinced this is a hallucination and that I'll wake up soon." This was also true. She'd been having trouble distinguishing between reality and her dreams.

"Oh. You won't," Pax said cheerfully. "But uh… there were supposed to be two of you. Any godly friends or people who can shoot lightning?"

"Merry!"

"Your friend  _can_  shoot lighting?!"

Merry couldn't shoot lighting nor did she have godly powers, other than an extreme aptitude for both math and quieting bullies.  _It is Merry though._ Somehow she knew. With her classroom cheerleader rudely distracting her and turning into a monster, Kally had forgotten about Merry until then. She pulled out her phone and checked her messages.

She bit her lip.

_Nikhil & I took the Greyhound to NY. Explain later._

Merry only called her little brother by his full name when it was serious. "She's with her brother in New York, probably with their mother," she said glumly. At least they were alive and not monster snacks.

"Is her brother's name Pippin—oh! No! No phones!" Pax yelped. He reached back, snagged the phone from her hands and tossed it out his window.

Kally gawked. She could envision the pictures of all of her contacts squirming to life and yelling for help as the screen shattered against some poor driver's windshield. From outside, she could hear the squeal of tires, making an audio illustration of her fear. "What—"

"No phones. They're bad. Attract monsters. Discourage face-to-face communication. Promote too much social media." Pax shook his hand like he had tossed out a parasite.

"I needed to call my parents!" she snapped. "This is starting to feel more like a kidnapping than a rescue."

"Parents? As in two?"

"Don't change the subject!" she said. She could definitely believe the ADHD problem with this kid.

"No really. Which is the step-parent?" Pax renewed his devil grin.

She huffed and leaned back into her seat. Now she didn't have a way to contact Merry or her parents. They'd be wondering why she hadn't come home. She planned to lie to them about why she stayed after school, for a drama production and not because she was failing chemistry. She didn't know what she was going to say about all of  _this_. Then again, knowing her family, John, her brother, was likely in some kind of trouble. Her parents might not notice her disappearance for days.

Axel cleared his throat from the driver’s seat. "My brother is rudely trying to guess your godly parenthood. Please excuse him…" He glanced at her in the mirror again. "Aphrodite?"

Pax stifled a laugh. "She's cute but not that cute. Those green eyes—Poseidon?"

"One of the big three? Unlikely. She'd have been claimed or killed by now. My bets on Apollo. Her hair looks like sunrise."

Kally felt like a hot iron was being pressed to her cheeks.

Axel's dark eyes glinted sheepishly in the reflection. "Do you have a step-mother?"

"No! My parents are happily married!" she said. Her siblings always joked she was adopted because she came from a family of brunettes, but those had been jokes.

A stunned silence fell in the van.

Someone honked at Axel when he switched lanes without warning. Kally wondered if it was the guy whose windshield was now decorated with her smartphone.

"Awkward," Pax finally said. He plugged his iPad into the radio, tuning in some rock she could only assume was Orpheus metal. Kally resisted the urge to snatch his music player and toss it out the window. This was stupid and she wasn't even sure if any of it was real. But it  _felt_ real. Tammi had certainly been real.

Pax tossed her his headphones. She caught them. His were yellow with an inscription along the thick headband that read:

_Apollo Music_

_Quality Beyond This World_

_Because He's Awesome_

"If you don't like the tunes, you can listen to some of your own," Pax offered.

"How far away is Camp Half-Blood?" Kally asked, begrudgingly slinging his headphones around her neck. She expected them to smell like week old gym shorts. Instead, the pleasant aroma of chocolate warmed her. She was mad at herself for wondering if all of Pax smelled like chocolate.

"In New York, so about five to six hours," Axel said. "But we're hijacking a satyr on the way."

"Is that code for some magical transport?" She could see it now:  _the Subaru Satyr_.

"Nope." Axel slowed the car down. Kally hadn't been paying attention to the road. They pulled into a parking lot in the middle of an open, golden field. To their right ran a small creek—Bull Run. On their left loomed the imposing Stone House of the Manassas Battlefield. All around the two story structure rallied a dozen teenagers wearing tie-dye shirts and holding banners that read:  _First the Tricounty Highway, Now Our Beloved Battlefield! Stop the Destruction!_

Two police officers looked frustrated and bored beside the protestors. One was a short, blond woman sipping coffee and rolling her eyes. The other was a taller man, covering a yawn. They didn't bother to look at the Pax van, assuming it was more protestors. Three men in business suits yelled at the police furiously. Several construction workers waited in the parking lot with their bulldozers, playing cards. Kally hoped they were getting paid hourly.

A short teenager wearing a Rastafarian hat approached the businessmen, face set with determination.

Axel tossed a flier into the back that read  _Stop them from expanding 234 and destroying our valuable history!_  with today's date.

"That's our satyr." He nodded at the Rastafarian hat boy. "There are a few nymphs and another satyr, but I think he's the one we want."

All Kally saw was a guy who likely listened to a little too much Bob Marley. "How can you tell?"

"Axel can see through the Mist," Pax explained, squinting like he was trying to do the same.

"The Mist?"

"It prevents mortals from seeing monsters all over the place. It's why everyone at your school thought they saw Axel and I carrying a guitar and lacrosse stick instead of swords." Pax bounced with excitement. He riffled in his duster, eyes still set on the supposed satyr.

"Is… seeing through the Mist normal?" she didn't know if she should be squinting too. Though she was still frustrated with their poor explanations, she'd been wondering how Greek gods could be roaming around without the average person knowing.

"Na, it's like a super power in the mythological world." Apparently Pax found whatever he wanted. Something glistened in his hands. "It makes Axel all the more awesome."

"It's not a super power," Axel chastised with a frown. He tapped his goatee and his lip twitched. “Though it is pretty useful."

Pax withdrew the golden apple he'd had earlier in Champ High. While he continued talking, he crawled into the back, nearly punching Kally in the face. "One of our friends could manipulate the Mist,” Pax said. "Used to drive him nuts that Axel could see right through it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go steal someone's reed pipes." He bit the apple.

From the shininess of the surface, Kally thought his teeth might break. Instead, his skin and clothing glistened. They fogged, like Kally needed to clean her contact lenses. His duster coat shrank into a police uniform; his hair shortened into a military cut. A tag popped out of his pocket that read  _Officer Lewis._ Once he came back into focus, Pax looked like a respectable member of the Manassas Police Force instead of a gang member of a Punk Renaissance movement.

He dashed through the back of the van and sprinted up to the two police officers. They lazily straightened. The blond gave her partner a skeptical look.

Kally blinked, "Did he just—"

"Yep," Axel said.

"Did he discuss a plan with you before hand?"

Axel shrugged. "He doesn't really plan."

The Rastafarian guy had walked back to his protestors. Maybe he was surprised that the businessmen didn't seem interested unless the guy was willing to sell his soul or give him a million dollars. He started up a chant that Kally assumed had been happening all day: "For saving the forest and fields!"

His crew chanted back, "For saving the forests and fields!"

"For recycling delicious tin cans!" a tiny blond with a messenger cap shouted beside the satyr.

Seemingly confused, the protestors repeated, "For recycling delicious tin cans!" They stumbled over the number of syllabus.

Pax grabbed the female officer's arm. She looked about to break him. "They've got a bomb! PETA has someone armed with a bomb here!" he shouted loud enough for everyone to hear.

The businessmen went silent and stepped back. One touched his keys and a Porsche unlocked near the van. The construction workers shifted uncomfortably and began packing up their cards.

The Rastafarian guy turned red with rage. "We don't have a—"

"No—not that PETA. People Eating Tasty Animals! They've infiltrated the group and are going to bomb the protestors!"

The rally signs dipped. One of the girl's mouth hung open in shock.

Then chaos. Protestors raced for their cars, some dashed off into the forest, one—Kally gaped—jumped into the river and vanished. The Police tried to maintain order, the female muttering commands into her radio as the man shouted at everyone to remain calm. Then, he tried to grab Pax, apparently recognizing he hadn't followed proper procedure.

Pax ducked him. He dashed past the satyr, back towards the Extraction van.

The satyr reached for his belt, intuitively knowing something was missing. His brown eyes widened. Frantically, he scanned the ground. In awkward, jerky steps, he hopped side to side, looking for whatever he lost.

Midway between the satyr and the van, Pax paused. He held out some reed pipes. "Hey satyr!" he shouted. "Looking for these?"

The satyr’s cheeks rouged. He kicked off his sneakers, revealing—

Kally didn't know why she was surprised to see the hooves. After almost getting eaten by her lab partner and being rescued by two guys who really ought to do commercials instead of rescue demigods, nothing should be weird.

Pax raced back their way.

"Oh! Centaur dung!" Axel said. "Kally! The helmets! Put the helmets in the trunk—and any stray fliers!"

She didn't know what fliers he was talking about. She also didn't know what was so important about these helmets. But Axel's eyes gleamed with a fury that reminded her how quick he was with a sword. To save time, she shoved the helmets into the pile of trash. She grappled with the trunk's lid.

Fliers fluttered up with the force of the lid, along with two small squeaking critters.

Kally yelped. Two thin, snake-like mammals scattered into the trash piles.

"What were those?!" she asked, pulling her legs away from where they'd disappeared.

Apparently, flying rodents were a routine occurrence from Axel's undisturbed stare. Yet again, she didn't know why she was surprised. "Helmets! Fliers!" he reminded her.

She shoved the helmets into the trunk. With the thick padding of Polaroid pictures and squashed scrolls, the armor barley fit. Once in, she scrambled to gather the fallen pieces of paper. Each sheet was a comforting cool shade with neat, handwritten notices. One set showed a child curled into himself beside a dumpster. A hoplite sword laid at his feet. His hands covered the tears streaming down his chin. The caption read:

_Ignored by your godly parent? You're not alone._

Another depicted a beautiful girl clutching a swollen belly. Her eyes were wide, a lightning bolt and eagle descending in the background.

_Abandoned: what to do when you've been left by an irresponsible god._

Memories from her Latin class sickened her. Kally's stomach felt like she'd swallowed an angry, punching leprechaun. Greek and Roman gods were notorious for attacking young, beautiful women. They were also known for taking their wrath out on each other's innocent children. If they were real, was that still a problem? She didn't have the time to look further.

Pax barreled into the van as she shut the trunk, landing flat on his back. Maybe the trash pile was kept in preparation for such crash landings. His attire looked like it belonged in a video game again, especially with the addition of the reed pipes.

"Give them back!" cried a whiny voice.

Satyrs were quick. In the amount of time Pax took to return to the van, the satyr caught up to him. The rage blazing in his eyes didn't match his victim-like shout. He wielded a signpost as a club that read _Peace for the Trees_ , ready to pound Pax's face in. "Juniper was already mad at me for skipping out on our date to help Rosen with this rally! And now you've ruined it!"

Kally glared at Pax. She felt sympathy with the protestors. All her childhood, she'd explored these woods and hiked the battlefield with her parents. They apparently needed a satyr, but there must have been a better way than stealing his property and planting a fake bomb threat. Were all demigods as irresponsible as, well, their parents?

She plucked the musical instrument from Pax's grip and leaned over to hand them to the satyr. Normally, she might not have been so forward, but her exhaustion and surprise was catching up to her.

He snagged the reed pipes back. "Why would you go around stealing satyr's instruments? That would be like stealing Dionysus' wine—er—um—sorry Sir." He sheepishly glanced about like the named person could hear. When nothing happened, he returned his attention to Kally and Pax.

"We're scared demigods that don't know how to get to camp! Please don't kill us Mr. Satyr! We just wanted your help—honest!"

If she hadn't spent the last half-hour with Pax, she might have believed his sob. He cowered from their newcomer, voice trembling like the satyr had been brandishing a chainsaw arm instead of a signpost.

Axel sighed.

The satyr lowered his makeshift club. His expression softened. "Oh! You could have just said that!" He turned to look back at the Stone House. The blond boy in the messenger cap sat on the door stoop, crying into his hands. Their satyr bleated. He mindlessly started to nibble the ends of his signpost. "I need to go apologize to Rosen and make sure he won't get arrested. Then we can head out."

He hopped out.

As soon as he left, the two tiny critters erupted from the trash pile. They darted at Pax, retreated, then raced back up to him as though they weren't sure if they should kill him or run from him. He laughed like this was an old game.

Kally yelped. She pulled her legs onto the cushions. Her sister had ferrets when she was younger, so she didn't mind them when they were expected. She hadn't expected these.

"Hunahpu! Xbalanque! Where have you two been!?" Pax rolled onto his stomach to swat at them. They darted out of range. One flipped into the air, acrobatically folding its body as the other jumped onto the back of his head.

"You locked the poor creatures in the trunk again," Axel said. “Either that or they gnawed another hole in."

Pax played dead, making a dramatic  _augh!_  sound. They did a few more flips, then raced into his duster coat sleeves.

Kally made a face. "Please tell me you don't keep your ferrets in your jacket."

He sat up, adjusting his sleeves. They rippled with movement, sometimes at his elbow, sometimes at his shoulders. Occasionally, he would jerk, as though one bit him. "They're California Long-Tailed Weasels. They'll spray you if you call them ferrets. And no—they need to hunt too often. When we're stationary, they live outside. You may call them Hunnie and Baller. They're special gifts from my friend's mom."

If it didn't seem hypocritical, she wanted to ask if all demigods were this weird. Instead, she glanced at the satyrs. The blond one stopped crying, though the cops were talking to him, likely asking about Pax. The officer must have lost sight of him and was now looking for… whoever Officer Lewis was.

Their satyr slipped back to the van. He hopped inside, a quarter of the way through his signpost. "Three of you…" he muttered. The number appeared to bother him.

The number three, the satyrs, the helmets, the fliers, the weasels: Kally had to ask a question before they had introductions. She glanced at Axel's mirror reflection, not trusting Pax to answer her honestly after that acting display. "What else do you have back here that I should know about? Any other surprises?"

"See the quiver of arrows and darts pinned to the wall beside your head?" he asked.

She glanced up. A leather cylinder case was nailed into the van. Under the cylinder case, in a plastic dispenser, hung five syringes. Looking at them made Kally queasy. A boomerang and several chains with balls at the end were latched beside it.  _Bolas_? She was surprised to find a sunroof on the ceiling near the weapons. Two thick nylon straps hung loosely beside the latch, seemingly empty.

"Those are coated with water from the River Lethe and a few from the River Acheron. Don't touch them."

This horrified their satyr. He seemed to regret shutting the van doors behind him. "Why would you have _that_! That's dangerous!"

"Why would he want to make arrows and darts more dangerous?" Pax asked, tapping his chin. He crawled into the front, nearly kicking Kally again. She wondered if he was doing it on purpose. The engine revved. They pulled away from the golden fields of the Battlefield, towards route 29.

"The needles?" Kally asked, nervous. Those rivers didn't sound friendly. She couldn't imagine what they put in the syringes.

"Those are Pax's EpiPens," Axel stated.

Pax nodded and grinned. "I'm allergic to tree nuts. Those squirrely seeds are way scarier than any silly river."

They went through introductions. Kally uncomfortably realized she was being lumped with two guys she hardly knew. Regardless of their saving her, she felt the need to distance herself from them in the eyes of the satyr. Especially because, he kept looking at Axel's quiver like it would erupt into flames.

"At least you packed lots of snacks." The satyr sighed and reached to the floor, retrieving an empty soda can. The aluminum crunched under his bite. Kally gawked. "It is going to be a long trip, but it's nice to have transportation ready too. I'm Grover Underwood."

Pax almost giggled. He whirled around to peek over his seat. She wondered if he realized front seat seatbelts were mandatory by Virginia law. Then again, this kid brought swords to school. " _The_  Grover Underwood?! As in the satyr with an empathy link to Percy Jackson? So, you're like, his bat signal, right?"

Grover looked offended. "I'm also Lord of th—wait—wait—" He shook his head, swallowing another bite of soda can. "How do you already know about that, about camp, and—how do you have arrows from the River Lethe? How did you know to prepare the car with delicious snacks for me?"

Kally saw her opportunity. "How  _do_ you already know about camp and—um—all that other stuff he just said?" As an afterthought, she asked, "Who is Percy Jackson?"

"We've been at this whole fighting gig for awhile. We've heard a lot," Axel said, ignoring her.

"You are all awfully old to have survived this long on your own." Grover examined all of them. He sniffed toward the front, confused. Thoughtfully, he picked up a candy wrapper and munched on it.

At this rate, the trash would be cleared by the time they got to the interstate highway.

Kally tucked her bag against her legs. She didn't want Grover trying to eat it or weasels crawling inside. "Fighting… monsters? Like Tammi? What kind of monster was she?"

"A half-assed empousa," Pax said with a laugh.

Grover bleated in alarm. "Don't say that! There are already three of you! Do you want to attract  _more_ attention?"

Kally wondered what that meant. This was more confusing than chemistry equations. Grover started to explain, but Kally soon found out they didn't need to mention a monster's name to have it appear. When she awoke from her nap in a fiery blaze, she found out the day could in fact get more confusing. After all, she had yet to be set on fire.

 


	3. Kalypso: I Insult a Sexy Goth Prince

Three: Kalypso

I Insult a Sexy Goth Prince

 

Pax demanded they stop for dinner after two hours of driving. He wanted to check if Hunnie and Baller had stored any dead animals in his jacket. “They keep leftovers,” he’d explained at Kally’s disgusted face.  

She was starving but didn’t want to admit it. With half the trash in the van consumed, Grover’s belch expressed his confusion over their hunger. Up until they stopped for dinner, Grover filled her in with a lot more clarity than Pax and Axel. Once they parked at a Chipotle, ate, and he explained the twelve Olympian deities, some minor deities, the dangers of speaking their names, the importance of celestial bronze, Camp Half-Blood, the Second Titan War, the Second War with Gaea, how awesome Percy Jackson—his best friend—was, how beautiful Juniper—his girlfriend—was, and how positively delicious enchiladas were, Kally decided it was time for a nap.

During the latter half of the conversation, Axel started tapping the wheel impatiently. He turned up the music and frisked his pockets. When he didn’t find what he wanted, he reached into all the cup holders, coin stashes, and behind the sun visor.

Pax tapped his arm with a stick of gum.

Axel’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Take a break. It’s my turn to crash the van,” Pax said.

Kally decided that Pax liked phrasing things in the least comforting way. When they didn’t pull over to switch drivers, she nearly screamed.

Grover did. “What are you doing!?” he shouted, biting into one of the cushions.

The vehicle didn’t swerve; it just slowed down when Axel let his foot off the gas. There weren’t a lot many people on the road at—according to the radio—10:53 on a Friday night, but Kally could envision an18 wheeler truck smashing into them. Like an acrobatic maneuver they’d preformed to the point of banality, Pax slid onto the dashboard, Axel slunk behind him across the cup holders. When Axel’s hands left the wheel, Pax’s immediately grabbed it. They settled into the opposite seats.

Axel put on his seatbelt like nothing was wrong.

“No worries folks.” Pax sent Kally one of his devilish smiles. “We were once professional clowns.”

She hated when he brushed things off like that. Though she was never good at insults, she glanced around the van. “Were you also once garbage men?”

“Only for a week. We got the cushion you’re sitting on from a dumpster,” he said.

At her hesitation, Axel sighed. “He’s joking.”

“No, I’m not.” Pax looked offended and added, “We got them like three days ago. Lamia destroyed our last ones.”

Another statement that horrified Grover. “Really?” he asked. He waited for an explanation.

“We got it dry-cleaned,” Pax assured. “Here—” He shuffled in another graceful maneuver to remove his duster jacket. Grover and Kally grabbed their seats.

No crashing or swerving ensued. Once he was done, Pax tossed Kally the jacket. “If you don’t believe me, that was definitely dry-cleaned. You can tell by the smell. Sleep on that.”

His kindness surprised her. Then she paused.

“Are there weasels in here?” she demanded.

He kept grinning in the rearview mirror. Slowly, Hunnie and Baller peeked over his shoulders. If she could read weasels’ expressions, she felt like they would mirror Pax’s.

“Lamia?!” Grover finally blurted. “Like, daughter-of-Hecate Lamia?”

“Yea…” Pax puffed out his cheeks then let them pop. “She was a Hades of a…. Hades of a—um…”

“Monster?” Grover offered, tearing through the rest of his cushion. The previous dumpster habitat didn’t seem to bother him.

Pax laughed half-heartedly. “You don’t know the half of it.”

It was weird how casually they spoke about monsters. Kally had never seen a monster before today. Other than her daytime nightmares, not much odd happened. Being the youngest of five, she didn’t even have to worry about keeping her grades up the way Merry did. Unless a teacher like Mr. Paine called, her parents didn’t notice much or anything at all.

“Has it been hard surviving with just the two of you?” she asked, glancing at the passenger seat. Axel leaned on arm against the window frame, staring outside. “You said you’ve been fighting for a long time.”

Pax jabbed him for an answer. Axel straightened and frowned. “We weren’t always alone.”

The somberness of his statement dared her to question further. All she could conjure was, “I’m sorry,” before silencing all together.

Grover started to snore.

Pax switched the radio to some Spanish channel with upbeat folk songs. He and Axel mumbled the words along with the singer.

Kally stuffed up Pax’s jacket like a pillow and tried to sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

_The light was no more. Darkness inherited the earth._

At the beginning of the dream, there was no body, no sense of being, only a sense of perception, of experiencing.

During her waking hours, Kally knew her enthusiastic history teacher—a Descartes fanatic—would say those lines contradicted. Here, that didn’t matter. She didn’t understand it, but it was liberating initially.

No thoughts. No sight. Just expanse, empty and light.

Then the darkness took form. It became a presence, thickening until the oppression made Kally realize she had to breathe and that breath had to be a choke.

With the breath came awareness. The nothingness—not nothingness maybe—but blackness, tightened in rippling coils, compressing her existence down, crushing her ethereality into a solid, physical form.

“ _Child of Light_ …” a voice hissed into her newly formed ears. “ _Here to reap the scythe of the lion’s labors.”_

No air would relieve her gasping lungs. There was only darkness and the constricting crunch of her ribcage. She wanted to scream, but had no breath to expel.

_“If you fail, this will be your existence. I will welcome you to the Fields of Punishment with this embrace.”_

The darkness quivered.

“ _What is this? An intruder? Two?”_

The coils around her shuddered.

In her previous nightmares, Kally never heard the uncertainty in the monster’s voice.

An angry hiss slithered in her ears.

Hands grabbed each of her arms. If she could breathe, she would have sobbed in joy.

“Pullll!”

“Of course I’m pulling!”

Shadows lurched past. Then she saw the sky. Cool grass cushioned her fingers, her neck, and the backs of her calves. She was out of the darkness. Was she awake? She didn’t think so. There were ellipses in her vision. A silvery, evergreen forest surrounded her, but shades obscured sections. The stars weren’t right. It was like her mind couldn’t piece together what things should look like—it was too terrified, too stunned.

She still couldn’t move.

“What was that?” the second voice demanded, irritated. It was a boy’s.

“I don’t know.” Also male, groggy. “It almost felt like a god but…” A yawn. “Something wasn’t right. Maybe it was two gods? Or a god and a monster combined? Thinking about it is making me tired.”

A sigh. “You’re always tired.”

“Resting too much can make you more tired…” Another yawn. “I think it might be my uncle… I’ll look into it for you, but I’ll need to sleep on it…”

“You’re already sleeping.”

Sleeping? She was still dreaming. Their dialogue followed like a dream. This was the first dream—not nightmare—she’d had in… how long? During the day, she’d felt the darkness constrict around her every time she had to go into a shadowed room or shut off a light. Time felt fuzzy when her nightmares slipped into the day.

Kally was so relieved at having the monster chased off, she was going to throw her arms around these two as soon as she could move. Then she’d give them each a kiss. Assuming this was a lucid dream. She wondered, with how patchy her world construction was, if her two heroes would be as patchy. Maybe she’d end up throwing her arms around some floating organs.

“Huh… she’s as old as the other new kids…Do you need me anymore?”

“No, thank you, Clovis. Please let me know what you find.”

Footsteps crunched the grass. As a blurry figure dissolved into the air, Kally gasped. Her limbs regained mobility in a violent quake. The frigid air tasted sweeter than a milkshake.

Her lone savior leaned over her. He was beautiful, and beautiful was the right adjective. His skin was chilled to an alabaster and cut like a young angel’s. His black hair swept down along his chin and his dark eyes blazed with the energy of a madman’s, contrasting harshly with his face. Kally was irritated to realize that look reminded her of Pax’s smiles. She was shocked to find this living statue wore an aviator jacket and a skeleton shirt. This only reinforced her irritation that her brain might be manifesting a more positive image of Pax, but she was too happy to care. This could have been the bully in her fourth block gym class, Clyde, and she’d still have adored him.

“Hey—”

“Thank you!”

She meant to kiss his cheek when she hugged him, in a way that showed gratitude and nothing else. His face was closer than she expected though so—

The boy shouted. He shoved her off  _hard_.

“I hate being touched!” he snarled. He’d thrown himself backwards with the force of the shove, thumping onto his butt. His fists clenched in rage, face contorted into a scowl. A black sword flopped to the ground beside him.

_Of course you do. This is my dream after all. Why would it send me a sexy Goth prince I could touch?_

Then she realized something that brought a different horror to twist her stomach. “You’re in a lot sharper focus than the rest of my dream,” she commented. Everything was fragmented but him. He was perfectly clear.

“That’s cause this isn’t a dream!” he screamed at her.

Tightness returned to Kally’s torso. “It’s not?” she squeaked.

“No! It’s not! Well—yes—it is, but it’s not…” He gestured helplessly at the ground between the two of them. “ _That_  kind of dream.”

She never had  _those_  kinds of dreams, but he wouldn’t believe her now. Kally wondered if she’d have been better off with the asphyxiating darkness instead of the asphyxiating embarrassment. Maybe she could lucid dream a pink elephant up, point at it with a, “Look! A distraction!” and run away.

“I don’t—I’m sorry! I would have never done that in real life!” the words didn’t even matter anymore. She was afraid she’d start to cry in shame, probably the only thing that could make this worse.

“Do you know you’re a demigod?” his voice lowered, but the narrowing of his eyes was scarier than his previous tone. Kally trembled. She was realizing this Goth prince could eviscerate her with a glance, maybe in real life or the dream world.

“As of a few hours ago—I guess a few hours ago.” She wasn’t sure her voice could get meeker.

He released a tense breath. Shakily, one of his hands went to a silver skull ring on the opposite fingers. He paused and his hand traveled up to his wrist instead. There was a golden band, out of place, with Greek letters. He spun the metal in circles, staring at the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he growled. “I’m not used to this whole being open and nice to people thing.” There was a silent pause where he could only glower at the grass like he could—

_Oh! My dream grass is dying. He’s killing my dream grass._

“I’m sorry I—”

“Let’s never talk about that again,” he suggested gruffly.

She eagerly nodded. “Thank you—I mean, for saving me from that thing—the monster.”

He frowned, releasing his circlet. “Any idea what it is?”

“No,” Kally folded her legs up to her chest and tucked her chin onto her knees. “They started a month or two ago. I haven’t had a normal dream since… well, I guess this isn’t a normal dream either.”

Color seeped back into his cheeks, making him look more like a person than a statue. Kally couldn’t tell if his anger was rekindling, if he was as embarrassed as she was, or both. He coughed. “For future reference, demigods almost never just dream. We’ll see visions of the past or future. Gods will talk to us. If you know how, we can talk to each other like we’re doing now.”

“So, you’re dreaming right now?” Kally asked. She felt like it was a stupid question. A nagging sensation reminded her,  _you’re asking your subconscious if it is also dreaming. You should also ask it for a million dollars and a bacon cheeseburger._

He nodded. The boy sat up, adjusting his sword.

“How are you…” she gestured around them. In her dream? In his dream? Was this anyone’s dream anymore or was there a crossroads where two people’s dreams met? If so, were the shades blotting out her trees his shades?

“Clovis sensed something happening in Erebus and asked me to help him look into it,” he explained. Sensing her confusion, he continued, “Erebus is a place—well, it is also a god like Hades and… other gods…” The pallor bleached his face again, voice quieting. She decided it best not to ask which other gods were also places. He regained his words. “Erebus is the personification of darkness.”

“Of darkness,” she echoed, gripping her legs.

“He didn’t come after you,” he said, reading her thoughts, “Something else did, but Erebus is the home of Hypnos, his brothers and several of his children. Clovis can walk there freely because he’s one of Hypnos’s children. Since it is so close to the Underworld, I have an easier time than some. We tracked the disturbances back to your nightmare. I think Clovis believes Phobetor is involved but… that was more than a standard nightmare.”

“Phobetor?” she was starting to remind herself of the story of the girl who could only repeat things she heard. Echo? Yes. Each time this boy tried to explain something, she felt more confused.

“You’re about to wake up,” he observed.

“Wha—“

 

* * *

 

 

The tires screamed against the asphalt. A horn blared behind them. Wind blew burnt rubber into the van. Kally’s feet slammed into the trunk. Fortunately, she’d slept with her head closest to the exit. Grover’s head, on the other hand, was closest to the driver’s seat. When he slid with the force of the stop, his horns smashed into the bin of enchanted metal, making two clear dents.

Horns? Kally blinked. Horns had protruded from his cap.  _Well, he is a satyr._

Pax shouted furiously and Kally was glad she didn’t understand whatever language he spoke. He sounded near murder.

Axel jerked awake when the van stopped. He’d been napping against the window. As he righted himself, he slipped a dagger from his glove compartment. “ _Cho_!?” he asked.

“ _Wahn gyal_!” Pax angrily motioned in front of the van.

The radio read 2:34. Other than the few cars blaring past them, there were no lights. Woods lined either side of road. A small grass medium with little white trash sprinkles broke up the four lanes.

A girl stood directly in front of their headlights, in the road, with her arms outstretched and a tired smile on her face. She had shoulder length, dark auburn hair. Her red tones reflected brightly in the low beams. Even from the back of the van, Kally could see the way those wide, brown eyes sparkled. She wore a green parka over pink pajama pants, featuring what Kally knew to be little yellow Minions and various colored cupcakes. The pants were artfully tucked into steel toed, construction boots.

“Merry!” Kally cried. She nearly forgot to assure Grover was okay in her excitement.

“Ooooooooo,” he murmured.

Axel didn’t take his eyes off Merry when he asked, “You alright satyr?”

“I have a name,” he complained, rubbing the base of his horns. “And I’m okay, I think. The horns took most of the impact. Maybe just drive a little less insane next time?”

As Merry walked toward their vehicle, she dropped her hands, resting them on her backpack straps. Axel kept a blade between the two of them as she leveled with his window. She seemed unconcerned.

“Axel—that’s the other demigod you were looking for!” Kally said from the back, alarmed he didn’t lower his weapon.

No one appeared to hear her. Similar to how she often felt at home, she wondered why she bothered speaking up.

“I’m Merry Blythe,” Merry said with a wide, careless grin. “I was told you would be here to give me a ride.”

“That’s not a real name,” Pax snapped, clearly frazzled from almost painting the van red. “And do we look like a Taxi service?”

“Your van does say Triple A Extraction,” she said, glancing at the side. Cars honked as they whizzed by. “Want to talk about it on the way to Camp Half-Blood? We’re almost there.”

               

 

* * *

 

 

They played a game of musical chairs with the satyr.

After they pulled over, Axel set a hand on Pax’s shoulder and whispered something to him.

“I’m fine.” He pouted. “I just—”

“It’s okay to be freaked out,” Axel said gently, “Go lay down in the back.”

“I don’t wan—“

“Ajax,” Axel said. Kally marked that as the  _I’m-an-older-brother-deal-with-it_  voice.

Pax stretched out on one of the benches, leaving one for Kally and Merry. Grover was kicked to the front seat, beside Axel. Later, Axel explained he wanted to see if Grover had concussion symptoms. Plus, he needed him for directions.

While the boys were moving around, Kally went to throw her arms around Merry. She made an intimidating entrance, standing 5’10, a good five inches taller than Kally. She  _was_ intimidating. Though the parka didn’t show it, Kally knew Merry looked like a Victoria Secrets model with a hearty appetite and a buoyant attitude. Most boys in their class were scared of her. Most girls hated her.

Kally gaped at the bruises on Merry’s face. “Did you get attacked by monsters too?”

Merry’s smile wavered. One of her hands touched her cheek with queasy curiosity. “It’s—” She stopped. “Nik is safe with mom. That’s what matters.” She dropped her hand and the topic. “I thought you might be a demigod too! Look at us, getting to go to camp together.”

Kally wanted to ask more questions, but she realized it might be better to wait until they were alone. Merry’s relaxed demeanor looked fragile and Kally knew how much they both hated to cry in front of others. Pax had calmed since he curled onto his jacket that she’d returned, but his multi-colored eyes followed their conversation.

Kally registered something belated. “Wait—you knew you were a demigod? And about Camp Half-Blood? For how long?”

She waved her hand. “One question at a time girl.” She took off her backpack, tucked it against the bench, and sank against the wall as though it were as soft as a stack of puppies. “Mom told me when I was little. She would have sent me to Camp Half-Blood sooner but…” She shrugged. “With the divorce, the only time she got to see me was over summer. She didn’t want to waste that. Besides—” She winked. “—Mom said I’m good for business at the winery. A cute little mascot.”

Kally couldn’t image Merry being anything little. She felt herself frown.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” Merry read her thought. She glanced at the decreased piles of trash on the floor. “But… most mortals, they don’t get it. I couldn’t even tell my little brother.”

“Except the really cool mortals. They get it,” Pax interjected. Kally wondered if that bench was plugged into an electric eel. He’d done a 180 from the haggard, panicked expression of almost committing manslaughter to alert and curious. “By the way, how did you know to stop our van? It’s clearly the coolest on the road, but it is too dark for you to see that.”

“A dream from a god,” she said. “I asked for a little something in the way of help, so I had a dream I was supposed to walk in four circles by Veteran’s Memorial Highway, sing two verses from  _Journey_ , and wait for the 23rd car to come by after 2:31 am, and walk in front of that car.”

Pax shook his head sympathetically. “That sounds just like an arbitrary thing a god would do.”

“Eh, I like Journey.” Something caught Merry’s eye on the van floor. “Is that Mr. Paine’s Argonaut statue?” she asked, more amused than accusatory.

The discus had morphed back into its gilded form. The arm and head peeped out of Kally’s bag, as though to say,  _“Hey! A little help down here!”_

“She stole it,” Pax said.

Kally wanted to protest, but she  _had_  stolen it. Obviously Mr. Paine hadn’t given her permission before he ran off to fish in the high school toilets. She hoped the janitors or someone helped him out of there. “I didn’t mean to… Tammi was an empousa!” As though that explained everything. She’d have to remember, after all this insanity was done, to give it back to Mr. Paine, with an interest of Twizzlers. She often saw him sneaking them before lunch. Assuming she wasn’t expelled or arrested for dusting a fellow student. Did they have detention for that?

“Ha!” Merry exclaimed. “That’s how she kept her hair so straight—that’s inhuman on a windy day.” Kally couldn’t tell if she was teasing her or mercifully trying to change the subject.

“Eh, don’t worry about the discus, Kally. This van was originally stolen too,” Pax said.

Merry and Kally exchanged a glance. That was  _not_  okay.

“Borrowed!” Axel said, surprising all of them. He’d been silent since they exchanged short introductions with Merry. Grover appeared to be drooling against the window, which made Kally wonder if he’d given Axel directions before passing out. “Then I left money for the owner.”

Pax rolled his eyes, “Money that was also stolen.”

“Earned!” Axel corrected. “By dad’s business.”

Pax refluffled his jacket, laid back and stared at the ceiling like he’d get a more convincing story by reading prophecies on the roof. “From products that were stolen.”

“Just because something is obtained illegally doesn’t make it stolen…” Axel puffed out his cheeks then released the air. “Just smuggled and skillfully acquired through hard labor.”

Kally wanted to hold the Argonaut statue for comfort. Sure, she’d heard stories of girls stealing earrings from the mall. She’d stolen hair ties from her sister before, but this sounded way worse. “What does your dad do?” she asked.

“He owns a pharmaceutical company,” they said in scary harmony.

Merry’s eyes crinkled with her laughter at the absurdity of the response. “Oh, you’re not suspicious at all, are you?” She patted Kally on the back. “Where’d you find these two upstanding citizens?”

Kally sank as far into her seat as she could and distracted herself by calculating how much longer Grover would have trash if he kept eating at his previous rate. “They found me.”

“Even better,” Merry said. Kally didn’t see how that was better, but Merry had always had an odd sense of humor.

Grover saved them from having to come up with a more comforting topic. His head rolled toward Axel, then shot up with a bleat, “Bhaa-aa! It’s you!” He motioned toward the driver, sniffing furiously. The sight of a concussed satyr eagerly snorting towards Axel was a little disturbing. “You’re the one that smells weird!”

“Your head is rattled satyr,” Axel sighed, like he’d had random hobos walk up to him and tell him the same thing. Kally wondered if Grover thought Axel smelled like chocolate the way Pax’s headphones did. “Were you falling asleep? You really shouldn’t do that if you have a concussion.”

“Oh! I’m fine! How could you think I could sleep at a time like this! There are four—” he gave Axel an uncertain look, but continued, “—demigods in the car! We should have just painted, ‘new, defenseless snacks for monsters’ on the side!”

Pax grunted, offended, “Uh—we’re not defenseless. Kally can throw her stolen discus pretty well.” She wished he’d stop pointing out that it was stolen. “And Axel is the best fighter ever. We can take whatever the Fates throw at us!”

“Grover, would you mind taking the wheel?” Axel asked.

“What?!” Grover responded, panicked.

Axel grabbed Grover’s closest hand and clamped it on the circle. “Dragon,” he explained casually.

Axel let go of the wheel and hopped up to crouch on the seat. A moment later, he shifted to stand on the center console. He slid open the sunroof.

Grover screamed. He grabbed the wheel with both hands, van careening temporarily into the grass on the right.

“How does ‘ _dragon_  ‘equate to ‘ _crash van_!?’” Merry shouted furiously. Axel was too busy to answer.

The driver side window lit up a brilliant yellow with the roar of flames. Hot air sucked in. Pax dove to shove Kally and Merry against the ground. Hunnie and Baller shrieked, scurried out of Pax’s shirt and into the trash.

Less graceful than Axel, Grover scampered over the armrests into the driver’s seat. The van swerved back onto the road.

“Excellent evasive maneuver!” Axel shouted as he climbed to sit on the ledge of the sunroof. He slipped his ankles through the nylon straps on the ceiling to steady himself. “You’re a good man… goat… goatman. Pax, hand me a bow and arrows and someone who can use enchanted metal more than once.”

Pax stood, snagging a quiver off the sword rack and a bow from the ground. As he moved, he glanced out the rear window. “Aw, it’s a baby dragon,” he cooed.

Pax made it sound cute. It was not cute. Despite the darkness of the Connetquot River State Park, the glow of New York illuminated the monstrosity tailing them. A silvery snake descended from the sky, darting in and out of visibility with each flap of the wings. The scales twinkled like the stars framing it, eyes shimmering with sapphires, wings opening like little half-moons. Had Kally seen it from the safe distance of a safari petting zoo, she may have found it beautiful. When it was close enough to ram the vehicle, it was terrible in both senses of the word.

Grover couldn’t stop screaming, “Di Immortales! A dragon!”

“Greek dragons aren’t supposed to be able to fly,” Merry babbled in horror. Her eyes were wide. She kept her body pressed low to the floor, waiting for another fire blast.

Kally could hear the  _thwak_  of Axel’s bow as he shot several arrows. She didn’t know anything about Greek dragons, but she didn’t think a couple of arrows would do much more than give it toothpicks for when it was done eating them.

“It’s an automaton!” Axel called down. “Grover, left!”

They veered. Another pillar of flames shot past the right window. Smoke sputtered into the back.

Another  _thwak_  .This one thudded. Axel screamed. “Pax,” he hissed tightly. “I need another bowstring.”

Pax unwound a cord from one of the metal bins. He turned to where Kally crouched on the ground. “Um, he’s gonna need you up there,” he said.

“Are you crazy!?” she demanded. She’d been scared with Tammi. This was a hundred times worse.

“Yes, but separately, I have no aim with projectiles other than darts and bowstrings are going to keep break…” he trailed off, jaw going slack as he stared out the back windows.

Kally couldn’t imagine what scared him more than the dragon. She dared a look.

Black SUVs coasted up the road behind them. There were at least four, taking up both lanes. Though Kally knew the Mist must have obscured the dragon itself from mortals passing by, they must have seen explosions, fighter planes, or a friendly UFO of some kind. Regardless, they gained ground without hesitation.

At Pax’s paralysis, something inside Kally cracked. She took the bowstring from his frozen hand and snagged Mr. Paine’s Argonaut statue from her bag. “Boost me up.” She tried to sound brave. Really, she didn’t want to see what scared Pax so much. Getting killed by a dragon might be better.

Pax snapped his attention back to her. He grabbed her about the waist and hefted her up through the sunroof.

Wind blasted her in the face. She gasped. For a horrible moment, her nightmare revisited her; the darkness stole her breath. The shrieking gusts would tear her away.

Then Axel pulled her up the rest of the way so she could sit on the edge. He steadied her with one arm. The bow was pinched between his knees. His other hand clutched at a gash in his cheek, one she assumed came from the broken bowstring.

“Incoming Roman legionnaires!” Pax shouted up.

“I see that,” Axel growled. From the roof, they were obvious. There  _were_  four SUVs. The back two had archers leaning out their windows. Kally winced and prepared for impact, but the archers shot at the dragon.

Her first mistake came when she looked at the dragon. They were close to it, close enough to be snatched up with the slightest dip of its wings. She noticed the smell. The air reeked of motor oil and something spicy… Tabasco sauce? For some reason, more likely because the arrows annoyed it, the dragon did a flip when it noticed her, nearly teetering into the van.

This was a horrible idea.  

Grover made a hard left, nearly pitching Axel and Kally off the roof. Axel tightened his grip on her. Judging from the scary-movie farmhouses and hills racing past them, people would never find their bodies out here. Her parents would notice in few days or a month that she was missing and they’d go broke paying the newspapers for missing children ads.

“Should we start evasive maneuvers from the Romans?” Pax still stood under them, looking out the back window.

“The Romans are on  _our_  side, numbskull!” Axel snapped. He released her to grab the bowstring from Kally’s left hand. She didn’t realize she’d been clinging to the edge with that hand; her other was cradling the Argonaut. When he leaned forward to notch the new string, Kally’s stomach tried to crawl out of her throat. When he unhooked one of his legs to try to bend the wood, she was pretty sure her intestines were going to follow her stomach up. If he kept doing that, they were both going to fall off.

“Hand it down here!” Pax demanded.

Though Kally was sure Axel must have fantastic balance to do all that pro-seat hopping with Grover and Pax, she wanted to cry in relief. Axel grumbled, dropping the string and bow down. He rehooked his leg, allowing Kally to focus on her statue and less on the road rushing by at  _will-kill-you_ -miles per hour.

Earlier, she’d thrown the discus without a thought about her form or stance. Now, she realized she’d been twisting her body to get the power. How could she throw it when she couldn’t stand up?

Arrows from the Romans clinked off the dragon’s scales harmlessly. Even the underside seemed to be invulnerable. It seemed more confused than aggressive, though that could have just been because it was out of fire.

The SUV closest to their right pulled away from the others. A door that would normally be found on a soccer mom van slid open. A weapon rolled out parallel to the car on two steel beams. It looked like a giant crossbow. Manning it stood a buff, curly haired teen with a blood-smeared smile. Kally wondered in horror if Romans were like the cannibal Reavers in Firefly.

“They’re letting the Kool-Aid kid man the ballista!?” Axel shouted in alarm.

Kally didn’t think the boy looked like a drink pitcher, but she assumed his position of control over the ballista was a bad thing.

“Kally, I’m going to hold onto your legs. You need to sit up as far as you can. Throw right after he fires that bolt!” Axel instructed.

Telling him he was crazy seemed redundant. She yelped when he lifted her higher. Her legs withdrew from the safety of the interior and onto the roof. She couldn’t will herself to stand, even when Axel pinned down her ankles. With the force of the wind, she’d fall flat on her face, roll off onto the asphalt, be run over by at least two SUVs, and have imprinted on her gravestone:  _should have worn a seatbelt while carsurfing_. The best she could do was raise to her knees.

“Pray to Apollo!” Merry’s yell sounded like a whisper with all the wind.

At this point, she didn’t care how ridiculous it felt, as if anything could seem stupider than what she was doing that moment.  _If you’re up there, uh, do whatever it is gods do to help little demigods,_ she thought,  _Please?_

The statue melted into a discus in her hands. Though the gusts whipped the smoke away before she could be sure, she felt like it was steaming.

Someone shouted through a megaphone from the SUV. Kool-Aid kid fired.

The bolt whistled.

The silvery dragon snaked from side to side, unaware of its impending need for reconstructive surgery. The arrowhead caught its head, exploding off the jaw. Sparks flew everywhere. It made a pained creak.

But it still flew. The wings pumped again, vainly trying to keep course. Between coughs of smoke and boiling motor oil, the dragon hiccupped flickers of fire. The half-blown neck rumbled deeply.

“Now!” Axel commanded, pinching her ankles hard.

Reflex took over. As the dragon sputtered one last pillar of flames, Kally twisted her whole body. Power rippled from her calves—had she stood up?!—all the way through the tips of her fingers, leaving in the form of that discus.

The golden circle spun straight at the dragon’s head, catching it in the back. Something else circular popped out with a hiss. Both tumbled into a hill, fading into the darkness. The rest of the dragon’s limp body steamed towards their van.

Then flames engulfed Kally.

 

 


	4. Kalypso: Come to New Rome, We Have Cookies

Consciousness hovered on her peripheral. Since she didn’t have any nightmares or visits from a sexy Goth prince whose name—she realized belated—hadn’t been spoken, she assumed she never fully lost awareness. But, her body refused to move at her command.

Searing pain had prickled along her left arm, shoulder, leg and hip, like someone took a human-sized lint roller, covered in super glue, and slid it from her neck down. She remembered Axel shouting at Pax, but not coming down from the sunroof. Obviously, she must have, else she wouldn’t be stretched out in a grassy field on a blanket. Two curious weasels did a war dance by her hair. Maybe she fell off the van..?

She choked. What if she fell off and broke her neck? What if that’s why she couldn’t move—that she’d never move. That happened to a motorcyclist in one of those driver’s ed videos that could be summarized in a way all parents approved: all driving leads to death. She’d become the next subject of a driver ed video. Don’t drive under the influence of dragons.

Someone held her right hand. Relief flushed her when she realized she could feel that and a blanket covering her. Not a blanket. Pax’s duster.

Chocolate strawberries. Everything smelled like chocolate strawberries.

“I know you guys are all hardened G. I. Joes or whatever, so this is normal but, uh, shouldn’t the drink of the gods work a little quicker?” Merry sounded worried. She tightened her grip on Kally’s hand.

A hiccup. “Na, she’s fine. I’ve seen way worse. Only  _half_  of her set on fire.” Kally didn’t recognize that voice. It was male and slurred, “One time, Bobby took an entire boiling vat during the War Games. He was fine. Just a month in the infirmary. Though we should have used unicorn horn for this one.”

The sky blurred into focus—near focus. Everything looked hazy. Merry’s hair glared in a car’s blinding headlights. Either the van or one of the SUVs was aimed at them. Kally rolled her head to the side, spotting the van in the distance. It was angled into a ditch, scorch marks peeling off the Triple A logo. One of the wheels looked smashed, though maybe just deflated.

In the moonlight, Kally could make out a hill with an imposing tree atop. The tree was thicker than it should have been and was wrapped in gold.

Kally blinked. She couldn’t see clearly because one of her contacts was missing. She wondered if it had shriveled and fallen out, or if it had just folded in the action. A heroic death for a contact.

She closed the nearsighted eye and glanced back at her friend. When she saw who sat at her other side, she discovered her limbs worked.

The cannibal Roman.

Kally yelped and tried to scoot away. She collapsed as soon as she pushed to her elbows.

The cannibal looked confused, stroking the blood about his lips. “I usually have the opposite effect on women.”

“It’s okay sweetie.” Merry took Kally’s hand again. “This is Dakota. He’s a Roman centurion. He helped Grover give you some nectar.” A bleat sounded behind her. Grover must have been sitting there. “Pax and Axel are looking for your—Mr.Paine’s—discus in the hillside, near where the dragon crashed. And, yes, your notebook made it through the fight.” In her other hand, Merry hefted up Kally’s bag.

Kally wanted to cry. Merry said all of that like she was speaking English. Unfortunately, her memory kicked in enough to know that  _was_ all true.

Two figures approached out of the darkness. As they got closer, Kally identified the energetic bounce of Pax’s stride and the militaristic march of Axel’s. Pax tucked two circular items close to his body. As they came nearer, Kally realized how tense they were. Pax had his devil’s grin, but it looked half-hearted. He kept glancing beyond the headlights. Axel, alternatively, stared straight ahead, limbs stiff. Blood still smeared his cheek from the bowstring.

When Pax registered Dakota’s presence, he pushed his second, silver disk behind Kally’s golden one. “You know,” he said when close, “I charge people hourly for borrowing my jacket, Cyclops, especially in this chill.”

She didn’t understand the nickname until she realized she still had one eye closed. She fumbled in her bag to withdraw her back up glasses. They made her look even more like a drama and art kid, but she didn’t have much choice if she wanted to see.

The weasels hopped about Pax’s combat boots. He shooed them off and they dashed into the hill.

In the darkness, she could hear others talking. Someone excited shouted, “It worked! The car didn’t tip with those counterweights the Vulcan kids installed! Bobby is going to be  _so_  sad he missed this!”

Another person approached, this time from the SUV’s headlights. A gentle gust blew the silhouette’s cloak in small undulations. A single braid flicked about her waist with each step. The figure wore golden armor. With the majestic beams of headlight spilling on either side of the girl, Kally wondered if they were about to meet the god of Jeep Cherokees. Would that be Hermes?

Axel’s hands absently fumbled through the pockets of his army jacket. Pax handed him a stick of gum without looking. Then Pax shrank behind his brother.

Dakota hopped to his feet, standing at attention. This must have been his leader. The enthusiasm of his movement made Kally want to rise too. Grover did, his expression dark.

Dakota started to report, “The girl is healing. They have a faun—”

“Satyr,” Grover growled.

Once she leveled with them, Kally could see her better. The girl must have been older than Kally to command such a presence. She had piercing dark eyes with matching hair. She walked straight up to Axel, seeming to know he was the closest thing to a leader they had. Maybe it was because Merry had no intention of standing, Kally couldn’t, Grover was a satyr, and Pax was practicing his manliness by continuing to cower.

“How did you manage to attract the attention of an automaton dragon?” she asked.

“That’s such a pretty name!” Merry exclaimed, making everyone but Axel jump. “Mine’s Merry. It’s so nice to meet you.”

Pax and Grover bit back laughter. “You want some water to put out that Greek fire?” Pax asked. Dakota looked horrified and took as step back like Merry and Pax were about to be struck by lightning. Kally hoped this  _wasn’t_  one of the demigods that could throw lightning.

Though the movement of the girl’s face was minimal, her lips tightened, then released. “It’s alright Dakota,” she stated. He released his grip on his sword hilt. Kally realized, alarmed, both he and Axel had grabbed their weapons. Axel’s motion had been so casual, she almost didn’t notice.

“This is Reyna,” Grover introduced like the name of his last period teacher that gave tests every class, “She’s a praetor of the Twelfth Legion. And she will not be talking with you until after I get you to the Big House.”

“You’re still sore about Zahra? She’s now happily on  _probatio_ in the fifth cohort,” Dakota boasted. He folded his arms and leaned back. He looked like he might fall over.

Grover went red in the face. He clopped up to stand nose-to-nose with the Roman, though really it was more like nose-to-chest. “That was Rosen’s first quest as a Keeper! I’ve been having trouble getting him to even think about taking another now that you’ve poached Zahra and are training her to spit on satyrs—“

“Lord of the Wild.” The tone of Reyna’s voice was more intimidating than if she’d drawn a sword between Dakota and the satyr. Though Grover didn’t look scared, he did step back, scowling. Reyna continued, calmer, “Praetor Zhang is working to change the treatment of fauns as we speak.”

“Actually, he’s probably sleeping,” Dakota mentioned. He quieted and went back to rigid attention at Reyna’s glance.

“However,” she said, “I thought you were coming back from a mission. Yet, you refer to these four like they’re new recruits.”

“New campers! They’re people, not soldiers,” Grover snapped.

“Besides,” Merry added with a dramatic flair, as if to say  _hey, there are still four of us here_. “Some of them are pacifists that would never be soldiers.”

Reyna’s eyes flashed over Merry to Axel, examining his goatee, his height, the scars on his—

Kally hadn’t noticed them until now. The blood had smeared off the white paint, revealing the marks. There were patterns of scar tissue in asymmetrical swirls and dots along his temples and cheeks.

“You’re at least, what? Seventeen? Eighteen?” Reyna asked. “How did you survive this long? I don’t know who your godly parent is, but even a lone demigod would have been noticed by your age.”

Grover went to answer, but Axel cut him off.

“I’m sorry Reyna,” his comment trembled. It sounded personal and haunted. Pax clutched his shoulder. Even Reyna looked surprised. Axel’s eyes glassed over, his voice regaining an icy distance. “I am neither a part of the Twelfth Legion nor a camper. I am my own master and, with the genuine respect of one leader to another, I do not answer to you.” He paused to emphasize the definitiveness of the statement. As if to say,  _my_   _continuation is by courtesy, not command._

“There used to be a group of us that surviv—”

“Axel!” Pax squeaked in terror.

Axel shot him a look. Pax cowered back, unsure if he should hide behind Axel or from him.

Once Axel was sure Pax wouldn’t raise his eyes from the ground, he faced Reyna again. “There used to be a group of us that survived without Greek or Roman gods. We met a powerful enemy, were hunted down, and slaughtered. Some of us ran. Many of us became cursed.” He touched a dagger at his hip with a broken blade. “Now, Pax and I are all that’s left.”

He puffed up his cheeks and popped out the air. Apologetic, he reached behind him and ruffled Pax’s hair. Pax peeked back up, over Axel’s shoulder. “Now,” he said, “I seek only to protect my little brother. He tires of running and being around others unlike him. I want him to see there is another life out there. I want…”

Axel turned his head, attention falling to the younger demigod. “I want you to know that you don’t have to come with me.”

 

 

 

Kally felt like she’d been dropped in the middle of the Jerry Springer show: Godly Edition. Though Grover had explained some of this world to her, she didn’t understand the tension between the Romans and… Greeks? She thought they worshipped the same gods, or at least that the conflict had been fixed after the war with Gaea. She didn’t realize there was an expected age for demigods to… demigodify? Or something. She didn’t realize she, Merry, Pax and Axel were past that age.

She’d known Pax and Axel for less than 24 hours and wasn’t sure what she thought of them. They had saved her from Tammi, but Pax—if not Axel as well—was about as predictable and trustworthy as a canister of nitroglycerin. Now, he broke under the weight of everyone’s eyes.

He ducked down and retreated for the van. “Kally, could you bring me my jacket please?” he choked out. He hunched like he’d been hit.

She liked the assumption that she could walk. Merry grabbed her arm, shoving a canteen in her face. Water was a good idea. When she tossed back a swig, she jerked in surprise. It tasted like Apple Barley Pudding.

“Nectar,” Merry explained briefly. “Now go after Pax. I’m going to listen to the big kids yell at each other like adults.”

Kally expected the group to break into argument. Instead, though Reyna’s expression remained fierce, her eyes softened with sympathy and deference. Kally didn’t stay long enough to hear where the conversation turned. Another push with her arms. Apparently, that nectar _did_ work quickly. She stood and put on Pax’s duster.

Thank the gods he had only walked a few paces before he paused for her. When she got to his side, she nearly collapsed.

There were tears in his eyes. She almost believed them until she remembered that little show with the PETA bomb earlier and saw that Pax wasn’t hunched from emotional torment. He cradled the silver disk and her golden discus in his arms to minimize them from view.

Pax released them with one hand to put an arm around her for balance. He shivered in the October chill. They limped toward the van, looking like the most pathetic pair of not-really-injured demigods in Olympic history. It was like watching the Men’s World Cup; Kally was certain Pax would stop hunching and sniffing as soon as someone called him out on it or as soon as they were out of sight.

“He means it,” he said suddenly, “He refuses to even try to come into the camp. I keep telling him we could  _make_  them—let him stay I mean. It would be safe. Dad couldn’t get to us there. We wouldn’t have to go on this stupid quest.”  

_Oh gods, he’s actually crying_ , she realized. There wasn’t much to do. She didn’t understand the situation enough to offer any real advice or comfort, not that it would be any good if she did. “What quest?” she tried.

The van doors were wide open. Pax set her on the edge of the floor. The metal fragments from the broken weapons bins were dangerously scattered amongst the trash. Someone had carefully picked out the arrows and darts from Axel’s special quiver and hung it on the wall, now at a tilt. The bolas, boomerang, and other weapons hadn’t been returned to their positions.

Pax sighed, looking exhausted. “Axel made me promise not to tell anyone unless they swore on the River Styx to keep it a secret.” He looked hopefully at her.

Kally’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds really serious.”

“Look at you. You’re wising up Cyclops,” he teased, rubbing the tears from his eyes. He gazed back to the group. Grover was making wild gestures back towards the hill with the golden tree in the distance. Axel looked uninterested. “I think they’re about to have a goatee off,” he stated “My money is on the actual goat. I think he’d have more experience with a _goat_ ee. Here, hold these for a sec.”

Pax passed her Mr. Paine’s discus and the disk he’d been carrying. It looked close to an old school CD or DVD, but thicker with intricate markings. One was in English:

_Property of Leo Valdez, bad boy supreme, Commander Tool Belt. If lost or gone homicidal, please return to Leo and Calypso’s Garage: Auto Repair and Mechanical Monsters._  The spot for an address was blank.

“I won’t abandon him, though I think he wants me to,” Pax stated. He carefully stepped around the wreckage until he got to the trunk. “Toss me that disk.”

Kally didn’t know why everyone thought her aim was so good. She leaned forward, cautious not to touch anything while handing it to him.

Pax shoved around the helmets and papers to make room. Once done, he tucked the disk away. Kally wondered if it came from the dragon. It was the same shade of silver.

“Did you and Axel plan for us to fight that dragon?” Kally asked. Though Axel claimed Pax never planned, she got the distinct feeling Axel did.

Pax snorted. “I wish. It would be cool if I had like, a Targaryen whistle or dragon caller. That was a stroke of pure luck, but it made Axel’s life way easier. It’s weird that it came over.” He tiptoed back over and sat down on her left. That hazel-gold eye was distracting when he grinned. “Maybe it thought you smelled sweet.”

Kally felt an urge to hit him. She hated being teased. Once she got her emotions roped, she asked, “Who is your dad? You said you and Axel…” Merry would have been better at this. She was always better putting people at ease. Plus, she knew a thing or two about terrible fathers.

One of the Romans started towards the van. In the distance, they could see Reyna offering a nectar canteen to Axel and Axel politely declining. At least now he was holding a cloth to his cheek instead of just his hand. Reyna walked back towards the SUVs.

Grover shouted after Dakota when the Roman centurion walked towards them. Merry stopped Grover by tugging at his leg fur. She raised her arms, signifying she wanted help up. Kally coughed back a laugh. She was pretty sure Merry weighed more than the satyr and would topple him over.

“Santiago Pax.” Pax’s smile melted. His explanation grew quieter with each step closer that Dakota took. “Our dad is scarier than most of the monsters these people have faced.”

“You and Axel fought bravely against that dragon, Reyna even said so,” Dakota said, giving them a vampire smile. It was like his presence sucked the energy and playfulness out of Pax and into a new host. “I know that guy over there won’t listen to reason, but there’s always space in the legion for valiant fighters. We have a lot to offer.” She was pretty sure that ended with  _a lot more than the Greeks_. “Including protection, a university, and a dental plan… I’ve had over 32 cavities. That’s more than one cavity per tooth.” He sounded proud.    

_That is disgusting_ , Kally thought. And she didn’t think being set on fire and falling off a car or into a sunroof was brave, but she’d stay quiet.

“Don’t you have to do an ordeal of the wolves or something?” Pax asked, glaring.

“Well, yea, but she’d be fine.” Dakota gestured at Kally and waved the ordeal off. He took a swig from a golden flask. “Do either of you want some? It’ll wake you right up.”

They shook their heads. Pax glanced over at the SUVs. “Why didn’t you f-fly over? Cali is a long drive.”

“Can you imagine trying to get a ballista through airport security?” Dakota laughed.

“I’m sure Amazon would s-ship it for you. I hear Romans get Prime automatically,” Pax sounded bitter. Kally was surprised an online retailer would matter that much to a demigod who threw cell phones out the window. That still made her mad.

“The location of Camp Jupiter, the ordeal of the wolves, and our relations with the Amazons.” Dakota hiccupped in an accusing manner. “You do know a lot demigod. You don’t look familiar.” He sized up Pax. Shivering and curled into himself, Pax—who was already pixieish—looked tiny by Dakota. “You sure you and your brother weren’t dishonorably discharged?”

“No,” Pax snapped, clattering his teeth. “We’re f-from San F-Francisco. You sees- stuff when you live there.”

“So, you do remember the last six months of your life? No memories wiped?” Dakota asked, “That’s been happening a lot to older demigods.”

Though Kally didn’t know much about the military, it sounded rude to infer that someone had been kicked out then casually change the subject. The Roman didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he flopped down on Kally’s other side, crowding the edge of the van. Had Hunnie and Baller come out of the fields, Pax probably would have told the weasels to kill him.

“Sorry, after Octavian and Bryce, we’re a little jumpy,” Dakota explained like those names meant something. “We drove because we’re on a sort of vacation. Obviously the whole Legion can’t go out at once, but about half the fifth cohort is here, plus Reyna. We heard some old friends would come to Camp Half-Blood for Columbus Day weekend.” He grinned. “It’s been a slow drive over, with a lot of stops. We even went to the original Kool-Aid factory in Hastings.” He fist pumped the air. “It was awesome! Driving is way better.”

“Yea, it’s way s-safer,” Pax mumbled, “You might get attacked by a dragon if you t-take an airpl—oh wait.”

Dakota laughed. “You’re funny. You two just keep the Legion in mind. We’ll be here for awhile, so you don’t need to decide immediately.” He unsteadily got to his feet and staggered back to the SUVs.

Once Dakota was out of earshot, Pax shifted something from behind his back. A golden flask sloshed as he tossed it into one of the metal bins. “Roman p-prick,” Pax muttered.

“You shouldn’t—” Kally stopped herself. She didn’t know why she would bother with Pax. Under normal circumstances, she could tell that he wouldn’t listen to her. With the apparent fear and hatred he held for the Romans, she figured asking Pax to bath Hunnie and Baller would be easier than asking him to give the flask back. She wasn’t even sure how or when he’d taken it.

“Oh! Your jacket!” she exclaimed.

Throughout the interaction, she’d been wondering why Pax didn’t grab another coat. In the skin and muscle department, Pax looked like he had enough insulation to keep a mouse warm. “I’m sorry,” she said, starting to take the jacket off.

“I’m f-fine. You k-keep it on. I charge hourly, remember? You owe m-me like, f-five Reese’s S-sticks and f-four drachma by n-now.” He laughed, but pressed his shoulder into hers for warmth.

She rolled her eyes. “Can you even have Reese’s? You’re allergic to peanuts.”

“T-tree nuts,” he corrected, “P-peanuts are l-legumes. C-common misconception.”

The next gentle breeze brought another waft of strawberries, mixing with Pax’s smell for the chocolaty effect. The others were taking a long time to come back. The Romans had returned back to their SUVs, huddled by a folded out table. From the way Reyna and Dakota gestured around the table, it might have been a war counsel. She wondered what they planned to fight: other vans with stray demigods? Merry stood between the van and Grover and Axel, her hand on one hip.

Anxiety struck Kally: Merry was stalling so Pax and Kally had more time alone together. She became aware of how uncomfortably close he was.

Then he sat up, rigid. He scanned the hill. One of his hands grabbed a dart from his belt.  _How did I miss that before?_

Along Pax’s waist rested a tactical utility belt that would put Batman’s to shame. His jacket must have hidden it earlier. Kally counted a flashlight, three vials, another metal cylinder that caused all that noise and light in the encounter with Tammi, an EpiPen, four darts, a cylinder that read  _Smoke_ , beside it one that read  _Poison_ with smaller font in what she guessed was Axel’s scribble,  _Don’t mix up again_ , a folded kit with metal prongs sticking out, a satchel labeled  _ball bearings and jacks_ , an odd set of three rings with two spikes protruding from the metal and his two daggers.

His other hand touched the cylinder labeled  _Smoke_.

“That was a scout,” he said. “Axel!”

The hills rustled. Axel drew a sword, but it was too late. Warriors stormed out from all around them, shouting and thumping their shields. They rushed the Romans, who were unprepared for an attack. Some were taken down before they could draw their weapons.

One intruder, a huge fighter with a bronze breast plate and a spear, ignored all the other Romans, storming straight at Reyna. Reyna barely grabbed her own spear before the girl plowed into her.

Grover shoved Merry out of the way, into the hillside. No one seemed to pay them attention.

Pax’s hands flashed like lightning. He’d slipped the top off one of his vials, dipping his dart and  _thunking_  it into an opponent before the fighter could get to Axel. The boy face-planted into the ground.

Like when he fought Tammi, Axel’s hands blurred. As his weapon broke in one warrior’s thigh, he’d snag the fallen’s blade to keep fighting. Too many Romans fell in ratio to the attackers. Dakota dropped while trying to shout, “Orbem for—“

Soon, the only two left were Reyna and Axel, back-to-back and dangerously out numbered.

Kally fumbled for her discus. Though she doubted it would do any good, especially since she only had one shot, she might be able to take out the girl fighting Reyna. Plus, Pax and she were sitting on a moving armory. They could recover a few weapons before being overrun.

She stood to swing the discus.

“Hold it,” someone hissed.

A cold piece of metal pushed against Kally’s temple. She froze. That felt sharp. From the worry on Pax’s face, whatever it was  _was_  sharp.

“ _Sas ekplissei,_   _Romaiki_?”

She risked a look. A surfer-type blond in black fatigues had a bow trained on her. Though she’d never heard Greek in her life, somehow she knew the boy had said, “ _Are you surprised Roman_?”

At her glance, he raised his eyebrows, “Boo!”

Then the light was no more. Darkness inherited the earth.

 

 


	5. Five: Calex Yes, It Did Hurt When I Fell From Heaven. A Lot.

Calex woke promptly at 4:00 in the morning, not because of the chaos between the Romans and the Greeks, but because his internal clock said it was 8:00 in the morning. He was running late to his mum’s clinic. In a few moments, his great granddad would poke him and his brother, Tom, with a walking cane. The old man’s mouth would wrinkle and crack like brittle paper, as he yelled at them in a language Calex only heard over his summer in Kakata. Well, mostly. His mum said one phrase a lot at home, likely because that old bloke had terrorized her with it when she was a child.

" _Awon olubwon erin ko bani o ti ru awon oniwe._ "

_The elephant never gets tired of carrying its tusks._

When Calex heard this, he would get up and help his great granddad push Tom out of bed.

At home, in St Albans, Tom was easier to wake. During the summer holidays in Kakata, Tom hated getting up to walk to the clinic, or try to catch a ride on one of the beat-up neighbor’s trucks. Tom knew how much they’d get harassed on the way. But Calex would mind Tom’s whining and remind him of one simple fact: since they had to share a bed in Kakata, it was easy to kick Tom onto the floor.

As Calex lounged half-awake, half-asleep, he waited for a poke from his granddad’s cane. He wanted to hear the elephant proverb. He reached to pinch Tom's ear, like he sometimes did when he couldn't sleep.

He pinched a feather pillow instead.

The air should have smelled like his great granddad's sun worn skin, not perfume and cologne. Calex shot up in bed.

None of them were there: his little brother, mum, or great granddad.

There _were_ kids though, five boys sleeping in matching bunks in a tidy cabin. A gossamer curtain split the room, concealing the other side.

Calex bit back a sob. He punched the pastel blue comforter, furious that his aggression did nothing but create a ripple of air in the fabric. He wanted to scream like he had the first time he woke here. All the Aphrodite campers had panicked, scared they were under attack. Calex had been so embarrassed by his outburst, he'd run from the cabin.

This time, he silently stood. He took his bow off the wall beside the bunk and shouldered a quiver. He didn't care if the harpies came after him for breaking Camp Half-Blood’s curfew like they did yesterday. He didn't care if he had to answer to Chiron, the camp activities director. He was going out to get some air that didn't smell like a sleazebag.

Mitchell, in the bunk under him, twitched. Calex knew the child of Aphrodite would be too afraid of him to say anything, though Calex now felt like a prick for punching the bed. He probably just woke all the boys on their side.

Frustrated, Calex shoved the curtain out of the way, only to find the head counselor, Piper McLean, waiting for him on the girl's side.

He wanted to get mad, but he felt his shoulders slump.

She wore a ski jacket over her pajamas like she'd known he would storm out. Piper was beautiful, but so were most of the children of Aphrodite. Her jagged, brown hair even looked good while in a sleepy disarray. Those eyes startled Calex. They were always warm, compassionate and willing help.

Piper motioned him outside.

Reluctantly, he followed.

They walked for a few moments without a word. The tension began to unwind in his muscles. He made sure it didn't happen too fast, or he knew he'd cry. The memory of his mum and brother was too sharp.

"I'm here whenever you're ready to talk," she said.

Calex frowned. She hadn't tried to force him to talk yesterday either. After he'd run off and they'd gotten the cleaning harpies away from him, she'd taken him to the edge of the lake, shooing off the naiads.

Piper had made him sit down and they stared at the lake in silence until Will Solace led the Apollo children onto the hill. They did sun salutations to greet their father at the approach of dawn.

She seemed to understand, sometimes, it was better just to have someone there.

Then she spoke, like she knew  _exactly_  what was wrong with him.

"I lost a close friend a few months ago," she had said, her eyes glistening with tears, "There was so much happening at first, we didn't have much time to grieve. Most of the campers have lost someone… there have been so many battles…" She took in a deep breath and touched his hand. "Nothing can make the pain magically go away, but…"

Piper didn't have to continue. The magnitude of how much he'd lost made him choke. Calex had crumbled onto her shoulder, sobbing like a child.

After she didn't tell anyone, or mock him, he gained new respect for her. Plus, she was the only one who didn't freak out when he was claimed the first day.

 

* * *

 

Everything started three months ago.

School's summer term had ended, opening the six weeks of summer holiday. Calex was excited because—unlike the past five years—he didn't have to go to Liberia with his mother. He'd be home and stadium ready for the Premier League kick off in August.[1] He was certain Arsenal was going to crush Chelsea this season and he'd shove it in his cousin's face or shove his cousin's face into the dirt as was often the end result of games between the teams.

His friends and he were going out to celebrate his 16th birthday. Since his older cousin, Paul, found out that a girl Calex had fancied since primary school worked at _Old Guinea_ down the street, Paul demanded she be the first to serve Calex a drink.

Calex didn't have the heart to tell him it wouldn't be his first legal drink at an establishment. There was no drinking age in Liberia. He'd learned that, and that he didn't like drinks, the hard way. For the sake of his friends, he'd order a cider or ale with his pizza.

While grabbing his rain jacket to leave, he noticed a letter on the edge of his open window. The letter hadn't been there when he used the toilet and he didn't think Gretchen, his little sister, and Tom were home to sneak it in. It was addressed simply:

Καλεξ

The font was solid, as though carved into stone. Several skims later, he realized it wasn't in English. He'd always excelled at languages… sort of. With fluency, he picked up Arabic and Yoruba at home, Kreyol, Malinke and, Dewoin from his trips to Liberia, and French and Latin in school. His mother said he had his father's gift of tongue. He only ever had to hear a language for a few sentences before he could speak it. Reading was more difficult normally.

This letter, Greek from the look, read easier than anything he'd ever read in English. It apologized, stating this was the best way not to attract monsters.

He crumbled it up and tossed it on his bed without reading the rest. He'd beat up Tom or Gretchen for it later. Throughout the whole night, he couldn't get the writing out of his mind.  _Why can I read it?_

When he got home, the letter was perfectly uncrinkled, back on the window.

Calex wanted to harass Tom, but Gretchen and his little brother had spent all evening making him an array of sweets that they  _swore_  they didn't get from the patisserie. All of St Albans knew Winston, his stepdad, would more likely blow up the microwave than successfully complete a frozen meal and his mother had been pulled for an emergency shift at the hospital. The two little ones had taken it on themselves to assure his birthday was brilliant.

That was another thing: Tom and Gretchen didn't know any foreign languages. Despite his mother's attempts, they knew Arabic and Yoruba about as well as a penguin knew how to fly. Gretchen proved mediocre with French, but she didn't have any skill to this level, though he supposed they could have Googled it.

The rest of the letter said monsters would come for him soon. He needed to get to Camp Half-Blood.

No matter how many times he threw it away, the next night, the letter would be unmarred on the window. He tried closing the window. He tried burning the paper. He threatened Tom and Gretchen that this wasn't funny; he'd turn Gretchen's One Direction poster into rubbish and break all of Tom's _Mythomagic_ figures if they didn't knock it off.

He caught them whispering to their father one night in the drawing room, "Dad, Calex has gone mental—he won't stop obsessing over that silly blank sheet of paper!"

Fortunately, Winston assumed this was a prank between the three of them, but Calex left Gretchen and Tom alone after that.

So Calex did the last thing he could think of. He wrote a note back:  _What is Camp Half-Blood?_

Then came the scrolls. The supposed camp scribe wrote down all the recent history of the demigods there. Calex ate up all the stories about Percy Jackson, Luke Castellon, and The Heroes of Olympus. He didn't care if it was true, but it sucked him back into reading in a way he hadn't since  _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_. Fighting against giants, being part of something important and unordinary. He especially loved hearing about Annabeth. When she fought, it was like giving Hermione a dragonbone sword from Skyrim and telling her someone killed Ron: amazing.

The bow didn't appear on his bed until autumn term started. The note on this one read:  _Good luck!_  Calex's heart sank. Letters mysteriously showing up on his window? Awesome. Deadly weapons showing up on his window? Not so awesome. Notes passively suggesting he would need deadly weapons and luck soon. Not awesome at all.

His siblings, conveniently,  _could_  see the bow. So could his mum.

Unlike most of his friends in Hertfordshire, Calex and his family were familiar with deadlier weapons than bows. Winston had permits for an antiques collection. Along with that, Tom and Calex had seen a lot of blokes off their nutter, sometimes even children, wielding in Kakata. The peacekeepers had done a good job apprehending most of the weapons, but there were exceptions. Nothing had hardened Calex into a fiercer fighter and a fiercer coward than having to fight an armed teenager because the prick had taken interest in his mum. Calex and Tom had to learn when they were supposed to be their her bodyguards and when they needed to run for help.

As such, Calex was shocked at his mum’s panic when she found the bow under his bed.

He didn't know why she was snooping in his and Tom's room. Tiwa was usually very respectful. She was fearless, had to be for her clinic, and was as ready to laugh at a well placed joke as she was to tear you down for stupidity, but she always believed people had to fess up for their own mistakes. If Calex wanted to buy a bow with money he saved from his summer job, he doubted she would care.

This bow was special though. It was gold, with the Greek engraving:  _Pono Psychis_  or Soul Pain.

As soon as she saw it, she stated, "We're going to visit granddad to celebrate Muharram." Tom and he would take a week off school and spend their entire autumn holiday there. Tom and he knew better than to argue. Their family wasn't the most religious, so traveling to see their great granddad for Islamic New Year seemed a little suspicious, especially since he practiced a weird hybrid Yoruba-Islamic witchcraft. Calex knew he'd get a good swat to the head if he called it that around her, but it was true.

What scared him the most was the one way ticket. He wasn't supposed to find out, but his mother left her bookkeeping on the table when she got a ring from work. When he took a peek, he found his ticket to Liberia went one way, and she’d bought a different return flight for him, to New York.

Monsters started showing up a few weeks after her announcement. He quickly learned his bow could fold down to fit inside a pencil case—a fantastic trick. For the summer, he had taken a job as a tour guide of the Roman city, Verulamium, southwest of St Albans. After the first two times, he became flawless at taking monsters down. Though he knew little about the actual history of weaponry, he'd withdraw his bow, explaining that it was important for both the Romans and the Celts. He would select the apparent monster from the group and ask them to come around, then he'd shoot it out of sight of the others. When he returned, all his tourists had forgotten the monster in the group— _didn't there used to be a guy named Bill here?_ —and thought he'd gone to use the toilet.

Calex could handle all these changes until he got to Kakata. He wasn't ready to think about Kakata and what happened leading up to Camp Half-Blood.

 

* * *

 

No one saw him fall out of the sky when he crash-landed in Camp Half-Blood’s waters. It wasn’t quite the plane ride his mum had hoped for him.

Zephyrus and the Erotes carried him to the camp boundaries but something went wrong when the winds hit the weather control boundaries. He'd fallen… Thursday night? He didn't know or remember, but this was what he could patch together from what Piper said.

Almost everyone was at the camp sing-along when the naiads found his body and helped drag him to shore, but one camper did _hear_ him splash into the water.

The Apollo and Ares cabins had been doing patrols. They had intel that the Romans were supposed to attack sometime this week, so there was one half-asleep scout, spotting for unlikely triremes. The child of Apollo ran to tell the others.

The camp security guard, the activities director, and a mass of campers rushed to see who had broken the barrier.

No one expected a lone teen to ascend from the water, covered in a tattered, blood-smattered dress shirt and some trousers. Calex was so choked on salt, so muddled by grief, that he couldn't figure out why everyone gawked at him. Last time he'd been aware of his surroundings, the afternoon sky had blazed with West African heat. Now, he shivered in a cold twilight, the sinking sun his only source of light.

Except, the light wasn't from the sun. When he glanced up, he found a bloody symbol ablaze above his head: a pair of wings crossed by a bow.

"A child of Eros," the centaur gasped.

Had Calex not been killing monsters the last two months, the centaur might have freaked him out. Now, he stumbled forward, blinking away tears. Most of the campers were of a lighter complexion than the people he left in Liberia. The whispers he caught, " _Cupid cheated on Psyche?" "How did he get here?" "Why is he so old?"_ had accents like he'd heard in  _Hunger Games_  or  _Lovely Bones_. Hollywood accents.

"What country am I in?" he asked, horrified. "Who are you?" _What day is it?_

There were too many questions. He wanted to fall backwards into the ocean and quiet his brain.

A beautiful girl in a ski jacket and jeans approached him slowly. "I'm Piper," she said. "This is Camp Half-Blood. We're in America. Long Island, New York." She put a hand out. "You don't need your bow."

He didn't realize the bow was in his hand. Reflexively, he'd aimed it at them, one hand on the wet quiver strapped to his back. Her voice was soothing. Although he already didn't mean to threaten them, her words confirmed he shouldn't fire.

Piper… as in Piper McLean? The girl from the scrolls? Calex gulped. If this was camp Half-Blood, why did everyone look so afraid of him? He shouldn't—couldn't pose a threat to these heroes.

Piper lowered her hand as he lowered his. She breathed a sigh of relief. "What is your name?" she asked, the question still saturated with relaxation and comfort.

"I—I'm Calex. Calex Rupin McKenzie." He didn't know why he gave his full name. "I'm from…" What did he say? If he said where he just was, they'd shove him into a sanitation unit and scrub him down until he bled, then bleed him until they found out if he was deadly or not and then—the worst part—the questions would start. He wasn't ready for that. He'd never be.

"From the St Albans."

She turned to the other campers in bright orange shirts. "Cabin Ten will accept Calex Rupin McKenzie as a grandchild of Aphrodite," she stated, challenging anyone to disagree. No one did.

Someone, a girl of maybe twelve asked, "Why are his eyes glowing red?"

Last he'd checked, his eyes didn't glow.

A boy with blond hair and grey eyes rested a hand on the girl's shoulder. "Quiet Caroline."

The centaur got his composure together. He coughed and clapped his hands, gathering the attention of the stunned campers. "I think that is enough singing for the night. Everyone welcome Calex." As though he'd forgotten, he bowed slightly. "Hail, Calex Rupin McKenzie, son of Eros, God of Desire. Now will someone please get the son of Eros some dry, um, fresh clothes."

 

* * *

 

Footnotes! :D

[1] A football or “soccer” tournament.


	6. Six: Calex When a Child of the Underworld Fears You, You Know You're Scary (or: When Romans Crash the Party)

They feared him upon meeting. They approached him like a lion on a safari tour—beautiful and powerful from a distance, terrifying and unpredictable up close. He couldn't blame them. That first day, after the mark flamed above him, he  _felt_  a terrible power. He could  _feel_  everyone's emotions. They hovered like an aura, one that would brighten when they thought of someone they loved and would shimmer in a blinding brilliance when that person was near. Hatred was similar. All the camper's deepest secrets, their desires, what they despised: it became his. He realized he could manipulate it if he wanted, with the nudge of his will or a whisper.

All he wanted to do was quiet the pain in his head.

The Aphrodite children also received a "blessing" when they arrived. They glowed pink. His eyes blazed red. Though Piper was unsure, she comforted him that it would likely wear off.

He needed it to. He couldn't handle it—everyone else on top of his own pain. Calex was no foreigner to reading people. Since he was a child, he  _knew_  when someone loved or hated someone else. His mates in secondary school would ask him if they had a chance with some girl or bloke and he could tell them with perfect accuracy. With how beautiful his mother was, it was more of a curse than a blessing to know when someone was interested in someone else.

He'd never been able to puppet them though. Nor did he feel the jealousy, the fears and the insecurity so personally. The worst were Jason and Nico.

Since Calex had calmed down from his outburst in Aphrodite's cabin the first morning, he was excited to meet Jason, one of the Seven. He didn't get to meet him the way he wanted.

While most of the other campers were in the amphitheater, practicing ancient Greek with a son of Athena named Malcolm, Piper showed Calex around. They had to dodge children of Ares in both the arena and the armory. One of these children mentioned something about an initiation ceremony for newbies but Piper said she'd curse them if they dared.

As they walked, Calex kept getting chills. "Care if we go back to the cabin to grab a muffler?"

"A muffler?" she asked, bewildered.

"Yes it's col—a scarf," he corrected with a sigh of resignation.

Other than Piper, there were only three people who seemed not to fear him: Will Solace and Conner and Travis Stoll. After hearing him speak, the Stoll brothers spent all their free time following him around, calling him "Gov'ner" and pantomiming tea drinking. He tried to be a little more attentive with how he phrased his sentences after that.

Jason was outside the Aphrodite cabin, talking about where to erect a statue of Eros with a child of Hephaestus, Nyssa. Nico was with them.

When Jason saw them approach, he thanked Nyssa and greeted them warily. He stood tall, almost like he was in the military and had blond hair and blue eyes like an Abercrombie and Fitch model. Nico slouched into himself and seemed the polar opposite, slouched, with dark hair and darker clothing. He flinched at Calex's arrival.

Jason and Piper's auras screamed about how much they cared for one another, glistening in circles that made Calex wince. But Piper was upset. Even though Calex was new and emotionally compromised, he didn’t need his godly sight to see why.

Jason was busy working with the Athena and Hephaestus cabins to build shrines to various gods. He was the _pontifix maximus_ or high priest to the gods, and there were _a lot_ of Greco-Roman gods. Apparently, he’d just returned from a month sojourn to Camp Jupiter—the Roman camp— to bargain for funding more shrines. Piper had been happy to help, but she wanted to spend more time with  _him_ , not his projects.

Then Calex showed up. He'd been dropped in by a few gods and raised from the water with the symbol of a desire over his head like, "Hey chum, how do you do?" Calex was no foreigner to having his friends get stupidly jealous because he'd attracted the attention of a girl they liked. The girls in his class often giggled that he was, "Like Kal Drogo, but hotter!"

Piper had assured Calex housing in Cabin Ten. She broke the rules to care for him when he ran off the first morning. She took her time showing him around camp. Once she found out how much it relaxed him, she touched his shoulders a lot and gave him hugs. They both understood it as familial.

Although Calex may have looked at Piper as some weirdly estranged godly aunt, it didn’t look like that to Jason or the other campers who were uncomfortably willing to write off ichor—or godly blood—as nonrelated beyond the direct parent.

Calex repressed a shudder. Once they got more comfortable with him, several of the Aphrodite girls didn't understand how creepy he found this. One particularly persistent one wouldn't stop flirting with him until Calex started calling her Auntie Drew and threatened to tell all the campers she was in love with Conner Stoll, the co-counselor of Hermes' Cabin. She  _was_ in love with Conner Stoll, but she knew the rumor would ruin her reputation and earn the Stoll brothers' endless mockery.

Piper introduced Jason and Nico like they needed the introduction, "This is Jason Grace and Nico di Angelo, son of Jupiter and son of Hades, respectively." She touched Jason's hand. That eased him.

"Pleased to meet you," Calex said. There was an awkward pause.

Calex never knew what to do in these situations.  _I'm sorry I'm attractive?_

"So, where is St Albans?" Jason asked.

"Britain," Nico answered for Calex. When Jason and Piper looked at him in surprise, he blushed. "Jane Wenham was one of the last witch trials recorded in England. She was from the area. She talks about it a lot."

_I guess, when you're the son of Hades, it's normal to talk to dead people._

For being a son of Hades, Calex couldn't understand why Nico feared him. When Calex had first approached the two of them, Nico trembled. Then he was flushed with shame at his fear. Calex got the feeling Nico knew how it felt to have everyone afraid of him.

"Welcome to Camp Half-Blood," Nico managed once he had control over his emotions. "It's good to meet someone else that’ll call soccer, ‘football.’"

Calex blinked. He hadn't heard an accent. "Where are you from?"

"1920's Italy," Nico stated.

"Ah. And are you from 5th millennium Iolcos, Greece?" Calex asked Jason in the most serious voice he could muster.

Nico cracked a smile.

Jason stared, unsure if it was a joke. "No, I'm from the Wolf House. I was raised by Lupa, the wolf Goddess."

"Charming," Calex said. "So, Piper, that makes you the Time Lord in the group, right?" He might as well ask if anyone was alien, just to cover the basics.

Even if Jason looked confused, at least he'd broken the ice.

Fortunately, two new campers came in later that day: Euna and JooYeon. This quieted the fuss about him. They were claimed as daughters of Demeter. Euna was also 16, friendly, watchful of her little sister, and a little spacy. JooYeon—or Joey—was 14, flashy, and tried to play the cute card. It worked for about 85% of guys at the camp; the other percentage was either already taken, played for the other side of the field, or part of the Athena cabin.

Calex didn't care. He preferred having the Aphrodite children try to ship her with him due to their looks—he was disturbed to find that people shipped real people together—than have them afraid of him. Even better, Piper did not stop Clarisse from enacting the initiation ceremony on those two. They threw a fit when their heads got dunked in toilets. Calex felt a little bad for Euna, but not at all for the younger of the two.

The best distraction from his entrance and what happened in Kakata came at the end of the day.

Because Americans celebrated something called Columbus Day, they had a four day weekend. Piper had come in early for this very reason. Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase would be driving in after school. If anything could bring him an ounce of cheer after the last horrible day, it was meeting the famous Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase.

 

* * *

 

 

On his second morning in Camp Half-Blood, while reflecting on the past 48 hours, Calex hoped Piper hadn't told anyone about his break down yesterday and that she wouldn't tell anyone about this morning. Calex knew Drew had started to spread rumors that he "freaked out" but he didn't want anyone knowing that he'd cried to Piper. He knew she hadn't said anything to the camp in general, but he didn't want her to tell Annabeth or Percy.

After they walked from the blue and white deck of Aphrodite's cabin, Piper led them towards the strawberry fields instead of the lake. They wouldn't be interrupted there whenever the Apollo children woke up for their sun salutations.

Once they passed the arena, Calex unclenched his fist. The air was cold, at least ten degrees colder than Kakata but about what he'd expect in St Albans.

"I don't belong here," he said.

"I don't either. If I have to see another fashion magazine, I might vomit," she said with a soft smile.

He gave her a weak grin. He appreciated her humor. It put him at ease. "I don't mean the cabin. I mean…" He gestured around them. "This. It doesn't feel… you're all heroes—" Calex stopped. If he admitted he was a coward, he would have to admit what he ran from. He decided to focus on a different problem that had been bothering him. "Why does it matter that Euna and I are 16?"

Piper weighed whether she should give him the, _We didn't start as heroes_ speech first or an explain about the ages. He didn't want the former so was glad when she said, "Jason, L-Leo, and I were the oldest campers to come in since Percy made the gods promise they'd claim their children. That was under special circumstances because of the Prophesy of the Seven. The fact that you and Euna came in within 24 hours of each other…" She pursed her lips. "Even Joey is old enough for it to be unnerving. Chiron thinks it has something to do with the coals stolen from Hestia's fire… and the nightmares."

Calex frowned. He hadn't read much about Hestia, but he did know about the latter, "Everyone else is having nightmares too?" He assumed his were just due to recent events.

Piper nodded. "Demigods don't dream like normal people do, but quite a few campers have been getting visited by monsters in their dreams. Nico and Clovis have been looking into it. They think—"

Noise erupted from the other side of the Big House, by Thalia's Tree. Metal clashed, people started to scream, and he could hear a clear cry, "ORBEM FOR—" before choking off.

"That's the Romans," Piper stated, eyelids narrowing in annoyance.

Calex strung his bow, confused and waiting for clarification. What he heard about the Romans had been mixed: sometimes Piper and Jason spoke of them with nostalgia, but Will Solace and the Stoll brothers spoke of them with the enthusiasm of a rival team.

"They have this stupid game," Piper explained, changing their route. They walked straight for the battle. "Whenever some of the Romans visit here or the Greeks visit New Rome, they'll try to sneak into the camp and 'conquer' something. When it started it was fun but…" She pursed her lips again. "We don't have the organization to stand up to someone so united. Greeks do more damage, but Romans capture more territory. Clarisse has taken it very personally."

"It's not a game anymore," Calex inferred.

"It won't be for much longer if they don't chill out."

Over the hill, they found the massacre. The headlights of four SUVs lit up the battlefield. Piper gasped. There were only three Romans left standing. At least, Calex assumed they were Roman. One was beside a crashed van. A Hispanic boy in a duster jacket had his hands up in surrender to three Apollo archers. His eyes were wide in horror, watching the other two.

They were a phenomenal blur. From the scrolls he'd read that summer, Calex assumed the regal girl in golden armor and a purple cape was Reyna, praetor of the Twelfth Legion. She battled fiercely with Clarisse La Rue, head of the Ares cabin, a terrifying tank.

Beside her was a boy of mixed ethnicity, tall, wielding whatever weapons he could pick off the fallen. There was a small pile of unconscious or incapacitated demigods at his feet, scattered amongst broken weapons. He was dispensing destruction like a factory conveyer belt dispensed  _Tizer_  soda cans.

Practice was never just practice at Camp Half-Blood. People broke legs, were set on fire, and almost drowned. Calex learned that the first day Piper led him around the camp. However, this fighter cut people down with practiced ease and knowledge. He'd ignore some of the bigger targets on the body to crack people's kneecaps, twist a tendon, or punch them in the throat.

The two had retreated up against the headlights of one SUV, using the light to blind the oncoming attackers. The boy momentarily glanced around to where the archers were shouting commands. Will Solace, whose arm was limp at his side, called for Clarisse to stand down. They had the two Romans cornered.

The boy grabbed something from his jacket and threw it down. Gold smoke erupted out of a canister. In the seconds before they were completely obscured, Calex could see the boy grab Reyna's arm to drag her down.

Clarisse screamed in anger. " _Where did you go?"_  she roared. " _Coward! Fight me!"_

The Apollo and Ares cabins searched around in confusion. No one responded to Clarisse's taunts. The only sounds were the whimpers and sobs of the fallen. Several Apollo archers dropped their bows and ran into the smoke to help the wounded.

"That's unlike the Romans…" Piper muttered warily.

Calex nudged her, pointing to the other side of the SUV where the smoke hadn't reached. Reyna and the boy crawled up from under the car. The praetor looked furious at the retreat, gesturing back. The boy sighed in frustration. He bowed, as though to say,  _after you milady, please lead us to our doom._

Reyna paused. She whispered into the boy's ear, then hopped into the back of the SUV. The other fighter looked annoyed at the orders, but followed after.

Clarisse snarled at the sound of the door opening and closing. " _What are you going to do? Drive away!?"_

A side door slid open on the SUV. As the door rolled away, a ballista on steel rods glided out parallel to the car. Reyna manned the weapon. The boy held a shield up on her open flank, imperial gold spear in his other hand. With the smoke clearing, several of the Greeks yelped, falling back.

Calex doubted Reyna would fire. A bolt from that weapon could easily skewer someone into an ogre sized shish kabob. Likely, Reyna would call for a truce.

Before the potential for escalation came, Piper scowled. "Enough!" she shouted, loud enough to echo into the fields, "Drop your weapons!"

The command in her voice took. Calex felt his fingers release his bow. Greeks dropped their bows and swords. Reyna stepped back from the ballista. The shield and sword tumbled out of the boy's hand, thunking onto the ground. Though Calex couldn't be sure from atop the hill, he thought the boy slipped some red headphones over his ears.

"No!" Clarisse shouted and stomped her foot. "Keep out of this charm speaker! We were going to win this battle!"

"Well fought, Daughter of Ares," Reyna said. She had no weapons left that Calex could see, though she still held her chin as though she were announcing a victory instead of a defeat. "But I believe the Greeks  _have_  won."

Will nodded in affirmation. "Good job disarming the praetor Piper. Now let's get to work helping the wounded."

Only a handful of campers were left standing. An Indian girl and a satyr peeked out from behind an SUV. They ran over to help distribute ambrosia and nectar. Piper and Calex walked down to help collect the injured.

Though his arm still dangled uselessly at his side, Will walked towards the pile of bodies by the headlights. As he got closer, his speed increased. He dropped beside one of the fighters, who clutched at his abdomen in pain.

Clarisse grumbled about not needing the help of an Aphrodite welp until she saw what made Will hiss, "Holy Apollo."

At Capture the Flag earlier that night, Calex had seen the type of injuries the campers typically received when fighting one another. Most of it was minor: bruises, cuts, scraps, the occasional broken bone. Being set on fire or nearly drowned was more environmental training.

Calex had helped at the clinic enough summers to know that the fighter at Will's side would die without medical attention. The hill breezed past Calex as he raced to help.

Will already had a piece of gauze from his pocket and held it against the fighter's abdomen with his good arm. "Take this," he directed Calex as he approached. "Apply—"

"Worked at a clinic," Calex summarized, grabbing the gauze. "What's your name?" he asked the male whose eyes weren't focusing. Blood soaked his entire front. Fortunately, the puncture looked lower than his ribs.

"M-Mark," he said. Sweat poured along his brow. He had dark hair and was bulky, clearly a son of Ares rather than of Apollo.

"Okay Mark, I'm sorry, this is going to—" Calex never said the full, "going to hurt" before he applied pressure. His mother taught him that.

Mark wailed.

"Necta—" Will started to order. Before he could snap his good hand at a sibling, the Indian girl ran over with her canteen.

Will took full control. He ordered Clarisse and the other Ares children still standing to carry those mobile to the infirmary, probably to avoid further confrontation. Clarisse argued, about to pick a fight with the person who stabbed Mark, but Piper suggested it was more important to help her siblings get to safety.

Will assigned a sibling to each person with serious wounds, organizing who to give nectar to first and who to sing to continuously. Reyna and her partner came over to help. The other boy—who had surrendered to the Apollo archers—rushed over with a medical pack from the crashed van. Will hummed some sort of incantation over Mark. It took Calex awhile to realize it was a classic:  _I'm walking on Sunshine—oo-oo-ooh!_

Calex wanted to ask if Will Solace was daft, but the singing worked. Mark's bleeding stopped.

Will slumped back in exhaustion. His eyes were still sharp as he pointed at the boy beside Reyna. "You," he snapped, "name."

"Axel," the boy responded but didn't stop patching a graze on an Apollo boy's arm.

"Axel, look at me," Will demanded.

Axel puffed out his cheeks then let them pop. He stood tall and gazed down at Will. Those dark eyes reminded Calex of some of the teenagers he met in Kakata, the ones who fought in the Second Liberian Civil War.

Will wasn't intimidated. He put his good arm on his hip and would have with his other if it wasn't still limp. "What were you thinking? A stab to the intestines. Had you stabbed a few inches higher—"

"I would have killed him," Axel acknowledged. "Had I wanted to kill him, I'd have punctured his lungs."

The healer scowled, looking at the others his siblings were helping. "A torn Meniscus, a punch to the throat—"

"I thought you were going to kill us," Axel stated. Sheepishly, his eyes flickered to someone with a broken arm. That expression seemed unnatural with the casualness of the prior comment. "I stopped the serious injuries when I realized you weren't."

Calex glanced around. Axel wasn't the only one lacking Roman battle armor and looking confused. Although he'd been desensitized to the sight of the wounded long ago, Calex felt queasy. Everyone had been unnerved that Euna, Joey, and he were so old. If Axel wasn't a seasoned Roman, but a new Greek demigod, he was even older. "How many are in your party?" Calex asked.

"Five including myself and the satyr," Axel said.

Calex did the quick math. That made seven new demigods.

From the concern on Will's face, he had come to the same conclusion. "I think we need a trip to the Big House."

 

 

 


	7. Kalypso Apollo’s Almighty Weapon! The Glow Stick!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Grover tries to make excuses for his near failure--like how hard it is to drive manual with hooves--and Dionysus pretends to be a bad father, a dangerous god has found a loophole to attack campers while they're in the camp boundaries: by going through their dreams.

 

 

No Sexy Goth Prince came to save Kally this time. She wondered if he and Clovis would grab her arms and drag her into a different non-reality or if the nightmares would continue as they had. The darkness tightened around her, forcing her from an ethereal existence into a physical one, then crushing that physique so she couldn’t scream in pain. _”I will welcome you to the Fields of Punishment with this embrace,”_ the creature whispered.

One of her ribs popped. A sickening crack reverberated through her body.

Then, a beautiful, blinding light.

“ _No, not another infiltrator—_ ** _you_** _!”_ the coils quickened their twists about her, as though afraid to lose her again, _“You are unwelcome here, God of the Sun!”_

The darkness hissed as the brilliance scorched its form. As the golden rays slammed into the blackness, the coils glistened into twinkling dust.

Kally knew this part wasn’t a dream. The illumination was too sublime to be false.

She opened her eyes, her _real_ eyes.

The searing rays condensed into a single, spinning mirage of light: a glowing instrument. The strings dripped like molten gold from a thin rod, rooted in an ornately carved tortoise shell. Each string thrummed without a player, humming euphony. She couldn’t distinguish the song or the notes, but they filled her with euphoria.

She gasped.

Her rib healed. The ache in her back and neck from sleeping in the van vanished. A pinch she had in her arm eased. A haze from lack of sleep—one she’d been experiencing for so long that she was unaware of its presence—evaporated.

Kally felt healthier than she’d ever felt in her life.

Until she lowered her gaze, she hadn’t realized she was looking up. The glowing lyre above her head lit up the awed faces of those around her.

Pax and Merry were on either side of her; they must have been carrying her seconds before. Both stepped back in surprise. As Kally watched, the bruises on Merry’s face lightened back to her normal honeyed complexion. A cut across Pax’s chin healed over, not even leaving a scar.

They were on top of a hill. From what she could see in the shining light above her, the van was still crashed below , close the road. Off in the distance, four SUVs were parked by some sort of plowed fields. The Romans must have recovered from battle quickly; there were a few constructing a camp site nearby, but several seemed to have disappeared.

Grover was with them. Beside him was the blond in black fatigues that had held her at arrow point before she blacked out. He stretched out his arms, like they’d been stuck in a loony jacket all day. She really hoped he _hadn’t_ been stuck in a loony jacket all day.

From down by the van, she saw Axel, alone except a single sentinel with a bow, cup his hands around his mouth to shout, “Ajax! You lost the bet! You have to pick monster guts out of the weapons for all of next week!”

Axel said it like they were betting on taking out the trash. Kally remembered Pax’s comment about their dad and envisioned his to do list, _“Hey kiddo! I need you to sweep the floor, cut the grass, and rip off Medusa’s head for Hippa’s wedding shower. You know she’s always wanted a dead thing’s head.”_

She wondered why Axel wasn’t walking up the hill with them.

When the blond in fatigues went to place a hand on her shoulder, she flinched. His smile was far too friendly for their prior encounter. He looked as happy as the beams of light made her feel. Though she couldn’t explain why, what he said next made her feel even warmer.

“Welcome to the family, sis.”

 

* * *

 

The rotating hologram of a lyre disappeared. She almost screamed when the darkness engulfed them. Will—as he introduced himself—still had a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We try to think of nightfall as a good time to say hi to our aunt,” he fumbled in his shirt and withdrew a few glow sticks, “but when we’re done saying hi to Artemis, we crack these.” He handed her one with a string.

She cracked it and slung it around her neck. “Thank you,” she whispered.

She breathed easier. Going from the totality of that light to the blackness—she shuddered. “What was—”

“You were claimed,” Will stated. “You’re a daughter of Apollo. Are you a musician?”

Since her siblings were so good with instruments and her mother had such a beautiful voice, Kally had always been too intimidated to try. “Uh—no.”

“You will be soon.” Will smiled. “So far, all the new demigods have been claimed as soon as they cross the border…” He glanced at Merry and Pax; both gave him a grin. “Except you two.”

Merry appeared content with this, though Kally figured Merry could have been claimed by the Greek version of the Joker and been relaxed.

Pax looked relieved. “Oh well!” He shrugged. “Mom’s probably really busy with godly things… wearing togas, eating nectar, using #ruiningmortals’lives, lol.”

“Chiton,” Grover corrected with a groan. “Togas are more of a Roman thing. _Please_ don’t mix them up around Annabeth. I do _not_ want to hear that lecture again.”

They started walking again. She wasn’t sure where they were going, but Grover and Will led the way. A valley spread open below them with a farmhouse that glowed in welcoming brilliance. Though Kally felt fantastic from the shimmering light earlier, her stomach twisted. Will said she was a daughter of Apollo. That meant her mother and Apollo would have been…

There must have been some mistake.

“I can’t be a daughter of Apollo,” Kally said.

Will mistook her consternation as awe. “You are. Cabin Seven is awesome. You’ll always have someone there to play ball with or to help you compose a song.”

They were athletic and good musicians? Kally really wouldn’t belong. Well, she might belong as an honored watergirl or something.

Pax saved her from another protest. “I think she’s just a little surprised by the demigod thing.” Overt sympathy soaked his tone, sounding like a commercial about depression.

“Shut up Pax,” Merry chided. Apparently, without having heard his ploy on the satyr, she could tell he was acting. She squeezed Kally’s arm. “We’ll talk about it later sweetie.”

Kally didn’t want to talk about it. _You can’t talk about something that didn’t happen_. Staring at the grass as she walked, she asked, “Where did all the Romans go? I didn’t see the predator out there.”

“Praetor,” Grover corrected, though he grinned at the misnomer. He seemed in much better cheer now that the Romans were gone and they weren’t surrounded by wounded bodies. “Reyna took one of her more injured soldiers to the Big House. She wanted to help that Eros kid help carry Mark too. I think she felt responsible for the insanity that was Axel.”

“Hey,” Pax said, “It could have been worse. I darted the first guy that rushed him. Axel would have probably killed him since he didn’t know you guys were playing around.”

“Like you darted Kally?” Will asked, raising an eyebrow.

“ _You_ darted me? _You_ knocked me out?!” she asked.

Kally was mad about the suggestion of her mother’s fidelity. Without knowing Will better, Kally didn’t feel right getting angry at him because his dad was lying about her parentage. With the 24 hour head start of knowing Pax, she felt justified in her rage at being darted, so focused all of her energy into that. She had wondered why she’d collapsed. There hadn’t been a throbbing headache—though she likely wouldn’t have felt it with… whatever healed them. Just a pinch to the arm.

Pax touched one of the vials on his utility belt uncertainly. “I wasn’t _entirely_ sure Will wasn’t going to kill you. I mean, I knew the plan wasn’t to immediately kill us when the archers didn’t fire—”

“Clarisse really wanted to fight Reyna.” Will sighed. “I told her not to charge. We already had you surrounded.”

“—but I figured he wouldn’t go after you if you were unconscious. I knew I could disarm him so…” Pax shrugged again. This had better not have been a shoddy excuse for him to dart her.

Will rolled his shoulder. “You’ll have to tell me where you learned to do that. My arm was barely getting feeling back in it before Apollo’s blessing took hold.”

Pax grinned, “My Uncle Frasco taught me those pressure points. But I don’t show and tell—takes the mystery out of the performance.”

“Back up,” Merry put her hands out for a _whoooa ‘der boys._ “Your brother will just kill people accidentally? How do you wake him up for school in the mornings? With a stick?”

Another chilly gust blew through the valley. Kally was glad to see someone had tossed a cloak over Pax’s shoulders. They slumped. “We never got to—” He cut himself off, then restarted with a robotic hesitation, like he’d heard this as a nightly prayer. “We were no schooled. Learn from life experiences. It’s more realistic. That’s what—that’s what Dad said.” Pax perked back up, “But you can’t blame Axel for being cautious. His instinct and skill has saved us from a lot of monsters, a lot of jerks, and a lot of death.”

Grover crunched up his face. “When you’re fighting other demigods, what you’re calling ‘caution, instinct and skill’ translates to homicidal tendencies. We normally try to knock out each other, not inflict mortal wounds.”

Pax tapped his chin in fake thought. “Would that be aegicdal for satyrs since the Greek root for goat is aig? Or would you just go straight for satyrcid?”

Kally glanced over her shoulder. By now, darkness separated them and Axel. Although she was mad at Pax—now for darting her _and_ breaking her phone—she hoped Axel was okay. Obviously, Pax hadn’t been able to convince Axel to come along, and the others were too respectful of his wishes or afraid to try. She wondered why. The image of the pamphlets about irresponsible gods and abandonment kept fluttering around her head. She wondered if Axel and Pax disagreed about them.

Chimes echoed faintly in the distance, drawing her attention back forward. The farmhouse ahead was a sky blue. A wraparound porch sprawled down from the quaint building like an anti-tank obstacle. Warm light spread down from above. Tables and lawn chairs dotted the surface. On one such lawn chair slouched a middle-aged man in a leopard print button down. Across from him, leaning over a table with cards, stood a centaur.

After the events of the night, Kally didn’t blink at the centaur. If anything, she understood why Merry could laugh so boisterously at the craziest situations. She wanted to laugh now.

When they got closer, she could see the man in the leopard print had black curls framing his chubby face. His blue eyes were so bloodshot, Kally wondered if he’d been sleeping less than she had in the last two months. The centaur looked about the same age, or at least his human half did. Could a horse look middle-aged? His hair was thinning and he had brown eyes. Without the horse half, he’d have looked like Kally’s math teacher.

“That’s Mr. D and Chiron,” Grover whispered, “Be on your best behavior.”

The name Chiron sounded familiar in Greek mythology. Mr. D sounded like a bad rap artist. Kally wondered if he was a retired demigod or if demigods ever got old enough to retire.

Grover stepped ahead of Will, clearing his throat when they got to the porch steps. “Um, excuse me—sir?” With how much Grover’s hands twitched, he could probably gnaw through an entire dumpster’s worth of trash.

The centaur glanced up with a smile.

“Ah, Grover.” The man picked up one of the cards without looking at the satyr. “I’m glad this Lord of the Wild nonsense hasn’t made you forget your basic duties.” He spoke slowly, like each word had to be pushed through a pin-sized funnel.

“N-no, sir,” he swallowed, “though saving the wild is—“ Grover choked off the words, recalculating what he should say.

The man glanced sidelong at the satyr. “Would you say your performance has improved? I heard you crashed a car bringing these demigods in.”

Grover trembled. “Um—well, sir, it is difficult to drive a manual with hooves and—um—with a dragon and some Romans on your tail.”

Kally thought it was just an expression until she saw how nervously his tail flicked.

“We wouldn’t have gotten here safely without him,” Merry stated. She strode up beside Grover to stand on the stairs. A sly smile crept along her lips. Kally wondered if that Apollo claiming light had reenergized her as well.

Chiron extended an arm behind him. “Please, come sit. There are plenty of seats, though I think we might need to start a second game of pinochle.”

“That sounds like a disease,” Pax whispered to Kally.

As the three new demigods and satyr walked onto the porch, Will waved his goodbye and said, “I want to make sure Clarisse hasn’t made a second attempt on Reyna’s life. Kally…” He gave her a stern smile. “Apollo’s cabin does sun salutation at 7:07 by Thalia’s tree. Come after you’re done.”

She nodded, watching as the surfer in black fatigues left. His clothing blended with the darkness until his hair looked like a golden bunny hopping along a black field. Merry and Grover took seats on either side of the dreary man. Pax and Kally dragged lawn chairs from another table to sit near Chiron.

“Yes, more heroes to die horrible deaths.” Mr. D made a small, unenthusiastic circular motion with his hand, as though he were swinging a celebratory flag for the grim reaper. He should team up with Pax in the ‘uncomfortable things to say’ department. “At least Maari Blythe and these other children made it alive.”

“Wow!” Merry put out her hands in protest. Kally knew she _hated_ being called her real name. During roll call, on the first day of school, she made a point to find whichever A or B name came before her’s so, when her teacher paused in the uncertain face of _how do I pronounce this?_ , she would interrupt and say, “ _call me Merry—like the more the merrier.”_

“Dad, don’t call me that in front of my friends.” Merry faked a scowl. “If you do, I’ll tell everyone that you give nicknames as a form of endearment.”

Mr. D rolled his eyes. “Oh no, Peter Johnson would let that go straight to his head.”

Conversation paused after their exchange, as though time were saying, _it’s okay everyone. I’ll wait here until you catch up._ Even Chiron was surprised.

Kally looked between Mr. D and Merry. Both had round faces with pudgy cheeks. Their eyes glistened with a slight craziness, like they were equally likely to smash your face as they were to dance with you. Then all of Merry’s comments and actions tightened into a coherent conclusion: the times she’d made bullies jump like she showed them something insane, how much people loosened up around her, how any party became more manic with her presence, and how her mom always said she was lucky for the wineries.

“You’re a god,” Kally stated. “You’re Dionysus and you’re—you’re Merry’s dad.”

“She is less dense than that other one you went out to teach, Chiron. Maybe your educating them is actually damaging.” Mr. D took a sip from a coke can on the table.

Merry interrupted before Chiron could respond. Excitement made her sway. “How’s Ariadne? Mom and I haven’t heard from either of you all summer. I knew you were busy but—”

A gasp erupted from Grover. His hands flew to his face. Kally feared he might eat them since he had nothing else to chew on. She was either about to see some satyr cannibalism or her friend get incinerated or both.

Mr. D pouted. He pushed one of his fingers against the coke can to tilt it, balancing it on a rim. “Obviously neither of us is happy with the distance but I would never want her to come visit me _here_.” He released the coke can so it teetered back onto the table. The tottering of the can as it settled felt tenser than it should have. Kally guessed Ariadne must be his wife or girlfriend.

Merry frowned sympathetically. “She’s still upset about that wood nymph?”

For a moment, there might have been remorse on his face. Then he muttered in indignation, “It’s ghastly enough that Zeus needs to punish me so harshly. Making me do his nannying job for him without any—”

Thunder boomed above.

Pax ducked down in his seat.

Mr. D huffed at the sky. “Yes, yes, Mr. Magnanimous.” He set his card hand onto the table to determine the victor.

Chiron’s brown eyes sparkled in amusement. “I believe that would be Ms. Eleos.”[1] He set his cards down a second later. From the way Mr. D slumped back in resignation, Chiron must have won. “Piper had said there were three unclaimed children. I was unaware one of them was yours.”

“Is _that_ show really going to be necessary?” Mr. D grumbled.

“Yes,” Merry stated, folding her arms. Grover looked like he might faint. Kally wondered what normally happened when people talked to Mrs. D like this. “You love making a show of things.”

Mr. D gave an elongated sigh, paused, then continued, “You’re as recalcitrant as your mother.”   

She raised an amused eyebrow, “Were you going to say as ‘my people?’”[2]

Chiron stifled a laugh but managed to look very serious when Mr. D glanced his way. He stacked the cards into one pile and motioned for Merry, Pax, and Kally to rise. “Come along children. We’ve left Piper alone with the other three new ones long enough. I am this camp’s director of activities as I’m sure Grover has already told you…” He trailed off. “Aren’t there supposed to be four of you?”

Merry and Kally turned to Pax for him to explain. His eyes had been darting all about the Big House, eagerly examining every detail. Kally realized, in horror, that—at some point during the conversation—Pax had clipped a pink hair pin into Chiron’s stallion tail. It now swished with a violent annoyance as though saying, _you’ll get your end soon fly!_

“Axel won’t come in.” He pointedly engrossed himself in the intricacies of a wind chime. Every time the wind chime spun, it morphed into a dryad. “He said he’d fix the van just outside the camp’s boundaries for the next three days, where monsters can get him and we can’t help.” He puffed a few strands of black hair out of his face.

Worry made her frown. Kally doubted Axel had phrased it like that, but that was Pax’s interpretation. Kally remembered what Axel said to him, _“I want you to know that you don’t have to come with me.”_ On the quest Pax referenced earlier? She wished he could and would tell her about it.

Chiron seemed about as surprised as he would if Pax asked him to tour a horse glue factory with a VIP pass. “I don’t think we’ve ever had someone refuse to come in. We’ve had people leave afterwards but… did he give a reason why?”

Pax’s mouth closed. His eyes sank to the floor and his shoulders slumped.

Though Kally wasn’t great at changing the subject, she asked, “There are other new campers?” hoping she didn’t sound overly enthusiastic.

Fortunately, Chiron took the hint. Kally suspected he’d go interrogate Axel once they were done with… whatever they were about to do. Introductions? Maybe they would have a cute orientation video. Kally mentally berated herself. Greek demigods with an introductory video? That would be stupid and make things too easy.

As Chiron motioned them towards the entrance, Mr. D stopped Grover to talk about his recent performance and something about Pan. Kally hoped he was referencing a small boy that could fly and liked to fight pirates.

Chiron paused uncomfortably at the door. “Actually, I’m going to let Piper take you from here. My wheelchair is currently out of order in the Hephaestus cabin.” Kally didn’t quite understand the correlation between a wheelchair and entry—that was like giving someone CPR for a head wound. Looking at how large a stallion Chiron’s rear was, she wondered how he could ever fit through the door. Or how he could ever fit into a wheelchair. Maybe it was more like an elevated bed with wheels so the centaur’s legs could dangle on the side like a doll’s. That image creeped her out.

Inside, there was a rec room with four teenagers around a ping pong table. A low whistle made Kally jump until she realized Merry had been the one to whistle, likely in appreciate of a boy sitting at the table. Seeing two of the girls reminded her that she was wearing crisped soccer shorts and Pax’s duster jacket. She was sure she looked like she’d slept in the dumpster outside a McDonalds.

Two of the girls were of East Asian descent. One, probably a little younger than Kally, was incredibly intimidating. Her hair was chopped just above chin-length, highly stylized to slant on one side, perfectly framing her narrow face. She wore brilliant gold eye shadow and a thick layer of black eyeliner. Though she had the same orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirts as everyone else, she tied it above her bellybutton—something that would have earned Kally a smack from a ruler at home.

She rested her head on one hand, looking incredibly bored and sighed dramatically, “Eonnnnnniii,” she whined with a pout, “They showed up. Can we leave soon? We’ve been here forevvvver.”

“Shut up Joey,” a girl beside her grumbled. Though her face was rounder, tanner, and devoid of makeup, Kally guessed it was her sister. Her black hair was long, in a simple braid down her back. She had her head tilted back against her chair in exhaustion.

While Pax, Kally, and Merry had been revitalized by Apollo’s blessing, it couldn’t have been past 5:00 in the morning. Everyone else looked like they’d rather take their chances sleeping on the back of an angry sea serpent than stay awake for this mysterious meeting.

A Native American girl with beautiful eyes stood to greet them. “Hello, I’m Piper McLean, head of Cabin Ten, Aphrodite’s. I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet you earlier. With the chaos with the Romans…that was,” she frowned, “complicated.”

“Oh! Aphrodite. That explains it. I was starting to think all demigods were just really hot—you know, being part-god and all," Merry said with her crooked smile.

The boy in the group cracked a grin at the sarcasm in her comment. He also made Kally want to hide inside the dumpster she hadn’t slept in last night and wait until someone more in the human realm walked by. He wore a red and white beanie and a black scarf. With his ebony skin, his grey eyes were startling. As Merry’s comment warranted, he was handsome, but his features were chiseled so sharply, Kally found it hard to look him dead on.

“Unfortunately, we’re _not_ from Aphrodite’s cabin,” Joey huffed and blinked at the ceiling, “Though Calex and I should be.”

Both Calex and Piper raised their eyebrows at the girl like _thank the gods you’re not._

“Welcome to Camp Half-Blood,” Piper started off. “Please, take a seat and have something to drink.”

It sounded like a restaurant. _If you need something, please bang your hoplite sword on the table and a satyr will be around to assist you._

Another satyr actually did shuffle about the room, frantically refilling Joey’s lemonade glass. There were eight glasses at the twelve chairs squashed around the table. They fumbled around to sit, Merry assuring her seat across from the guy in the beanie and beside Kally. Pax sat on her other side, surprisingly quiet, though his eyes still shot around the room in childish curiosity.

The world slipped out of focus for a moment. Kally readjusted her glasses. She thought she’d felt something cold pass over her forehead. Merry and Pax glanced toward her, as though to confirm she’d felt the same thing.

The lemonade serving satyr was gone.

Piper didn’t seem bothered by his disappearance or the sudden chill.

Like the first day of a real summer camp, she had them announce their name, home state, age, and godly parent—though Kally had never had to announce a godly parent at _New Life Bible Camp_ before. Annoyed, but guessing it would be easier to just play along with the stupid game, she announced Apollo as her father. She’d argue with Will about the mix up later. They sped through everyone.

Calex Rupin McKenzie, St Albans—he paused to helpfully add, “North of London”—16, Eros.

Merry Blythe—Kally was surprised Merry went with her New York home instead of Virginia—16, Dionysus.

JooYeon Song, Virginia, 14, Demeter.

Euna Song—“eoni means sister, it’s not my name”— _recently_ moved to Virginia from Georgia, 16, Demeter.

Kalypso Cassand, Virginia, 16, Apollo.

Until they hit Pax.

“Ajax Pax, but I go by Pax since…” he paused, frowning. “ _Too many A’s and X’s and too much awesome,”_ didn’t work when Axel wasn’t around. Maybe he’d never had to introduce himself without his brother there. “Well, my brother’s name is Axel Pax. He’s 18 and I’m 15. We’re most recently from California, home of Greek Satan.”

Piper looked concerned. “There’s no way your father _is_ Hades though. Monsters would have found you forever ago, or Zeus would have killed you.” She tapped the ping pong table with her fingers. “Eighteen? How did you and your brother survive so long?”

Pax looked like he was getting really tired of hearing that question. “My brother is the Chuck Norris of the mythological world. His tears could probably cure Gorgon’s blood, but he never cries.” His fingers twitched as though he really wanted to write that one down. “But monsters _did_ find us when we were little and Zeus—well Jupiter— _did_ try to kill us indirectly. I don’t think we’re from the big three though. He’s my brother from another mother and Dad is…” Pax swallowed. “I don’t _think_ Dad’s a god.”

“It’s hard not knowing if your parents are mortal or not.” Merry reached over Kally to pat Pax’s back.

“We didn’t know our mom was immortal until Dad dropped us off here,” Euna offered. Her eyes were half shut in exhaustion, but she seemed relieved to have something to focus on. “Did he raise you?” she asked. It sounded like she was trying to be more helpful than interrogative.

Pax glanced at the floor. One of his hands tapped through his vials. “With the efficiency of a cuckoo bird.”

“He popped you down in some random bloke’s nest?” Calex asked, unsure how much of that was a joke and how much of that was literal.

This felt too personal for a “pleased to meet you” conversation. Had Axel been there to answer with Pax as back up, it might be more comfortable, but right now this felt like they were telling Pax he had messed up and had detention. “ _How dare you have a mysterious father!”_

Piper got the same vibe. “Have either of you exhibited any powers?” she changed the subject. Kally guessed she’d be joining the _Chat-with-Pax-and-Axel-Club_ afterwards. “I could charm speak by your age. Most demigods have some sign.”

“Other than godly looks?” The devilish grin was much more natural than the prior glumness. Joey snorted. “Axel excels with any weapon he touches…” From the distant glint in his eyes, Kally could read the, _any weapon he touches and doesn’t break…_ “He is pretty good with the Mist and uh—I’m pretty good at acrobatics.”

“What about when you turned into that cop?” Kally asked, wondering how he could discount that.

A spike of pain shot through Kally’s shin. She yipped at where Pax had kicked her. “Ow!”

“Magical item I got off a monster. I’m out of it now,” He stated innocently.

Kally glared at him, rubbing her shin. Another mark on the list: _Reasons to Hate Pax._ This didn’t seem to bother Piper. She leaned back in thought. “I’m sorry for all the questioning. We were trying to see if anything correlated between the… seven of you.” She hesitated on the untouched lemonade where Axel would have sat. “This is a lot of demigods to get at once. Your age makes it even more unusual.”

The lights flickered. This time, everyone except Piper glanced around. Compared to her prior attention and reaction, she seemed frozen. Kally grabbed the sleeve of Merry’s parka.

The wind chimes stopped. Sound paused all together until Piper continued in an unnaturally quiet voice, “But we should get to the real reason for this discussion.”

“We?” Kally repeated. She didn’t know why it bothered her. There were others in the camp, so the plural wasn’t that weird. Coupled with the sudden glassiness of Piper’s eyes, the tone made Kally tightened her grip on Merry. On her other side, she could see Pax’s hand settle on his darts. Could she reach into her bag for her discus without it being obvious? She didn’t understand why she felt the sudden need to be armed.

Across the table, Calex stretched in a fake yawn so his fingers could touch his bow. His eyes widened and he stopped, “Your emotions… you’re _not_ Piper anymore.”

Piper ignored him, staring straight through the table. With each word, her head bobbed from side to side, like she was a marionette. “We need to talk about the nightmares.”

Then her head jerked towards Kally. Her eyes were black, lacking any iris. With each blink, they rounded until they were like that of an insect. Tears streamed down from the spheres—her eyes now lacked tear ducts. Each streak darkened Piper’s once beautiful face. Once it landed on the floor, the black liquid expanded into a pool of shadow.

“We need to talk about _your_ nightmare.”

 

 

* * *

 

 Footnotes: XD

 

[1] Goddess of Mercy

[2] Dionysus tried to invade India and was chased out by Brahman >> No joke.


	8. Ajax: The Overdramatic Puddle and Boar with a Bowtie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the seven new half-bloods are separated into their own nightmares, only Pax realizes the horrors they're experiencing aren't real. He's pretty sure Sexy Goth Prince Nico isn't going to save him the way Nico saved Kally, so he needs to rely on his own wit to rescue everyone from this... boar... with a bowtie?

 

 

                Pax had a lot of things on the to-do list.

                Being torn apart by a nightmare wasn’t one of them.

                Since Axel came up with this suicidal quest and his mother had given him visions of how to infiltrate Camp Half-Blood, the nightmares started. Axel woke up screaming most nights. This wasn’t uncommon. After the war ended, Axel often had night terrors. To lighten things up, Pax bought him a night-time teddy with a shirt he specially made that read:

                _Warning: Not intended for use by Augur._

                This was different though. Recently, when Pax and Axel normally took their respective couches in the van or—when they got _really_ lucky—when they could squat at a condemned house, Axel wouldn’t lay down. He’d stay up for 50 hours straight, claiming he was fine until his body and will gave. In the past, Pax could coax him into sharing his strife. He would flop down near his half-brother and grin, “I had a dream about this really hot lizard-like monster lady. She was, well, dreamy,” and Axel would eventually tell him about his night terror to shut Pax up.

                With these new nocturnal visions, neither of them wanted to talk. When Pax tried, lying that he’d seen something ridiculous, Axel would start to scour his pockets. He’d then move on to the van. Pax knew all the places Axel hid his cigarettes. He’d pick up sleight-of-hand from the carnies way better than Axel, and he usually threw out Axel’s packs moments after he lit the first cylinder.

                Axel had quit—or been trying to quit—since they had to crawl back to their father’s. He saw Santiago suck in all the toxicity, pause, then puff it out, exactly how Axel did when he was anxious. Axel threw up after he realized the similarity, telling Pax he wanted to stop.

                Gum was essential. Pax wrote little notes about the disturbing side effects of gum on the wrappers. Things like _: I contain sheep byproducts_ and _I can give you mercury poisoning from your fillings!_ He used to do it on the cigarette cases and he figured it would make everything homier.

                The beginning was tough—especially around Santiago and Kouta, their older half-brother. Kouta would slip him a cigarette or gift him a cigar with the cruel note: _People don’t change; they just find new ways to lie._

                Once they left _that_ house, Axel did better. They’d been doing well until these nightmares. With the insomnia, came anxiety. Axel got worse with anxiety.

                The night before they picked up Kally, Pax had to dart him. He hadn’t wanted to, but he knew they’d need to fight. Plus, his mother mentioned the girl would be cute, and Pax was always seeking a different girl for Axel. He didn’t need zombie bags under his eyes to scare a new demigod away.

                Sitting here at Camp Half-Blood, watching everyone react, Pax knew what was coming. He’d had his own revisiting fears. He didn’t know what the others were seeing, but he seemed to be the only one capable of seeing _them_.

                Calex dropped his bow. He fell backwards out of his chair, screaming, “No! You can’t have them—no!” He tried to run but slipped.

                Joey grasped at her neck, gagging.

                Euna frantically pushed at the table, whining and shaking her head.

                He glanced at Kally. She was completely still, arms flattened against her sides. No breathe came from her lips. She looked petrified.

                He couldn’t see Merry on her other side.

                Then he smelled the overpowering reek of animal hide.

                In place of Piper sat an imposing figure. A Roman helmet with feline whiskers glowered down at him. The plums sprouting from the top flowed down against a cape of golden fur. The wearer’s face flickered like black flames, so dark he couldn’t quite see but knew something moved therein.

                Metal clanked as it stood.

                Singing, husky and slow, gradually increasing in volume and cheer, the Leonis Caput growled, “ _Come out, come out._

_“What gave you away? The beat of your heart!_

_“Don’t pout, Don’t pout,_

_“I’ve known where you were right from the start.”_

Pax shifted uncomfortably. Hiding would be useless—he was in plain sight. He didn’t need the song to tell him that.

                “I guess I can’t just give you a lollipop and ask you to go away?” Pax laughed weakly.

                He wished the others weren’t all isolated in their own nightmares. Not that seeing each other’s nightmares would help, but at least they could cower in unity. Everyone else was stuck on _repeat,_ either tripping or pushing at the table or… well, Kally was just sitting there. Had this not been terrifying, he’d love to film it, add a catchy dupstep beat and upload it onto Youtube: _Demigods Drop the Bass._

                Maybe Pax was the only one that could see them because he _knew_ the _Leonis Caput_ was safely locked away in the van. He knew this couldn’t be and wasn’t real. He was pretty sure it was a god in disguise that could still kill him but—eh—one step at a time.

                The masked figure strode around his… they weren’t really friends. Potential friends? Why not. Regardless, it walked past where Joey gagged. It stroked her hair in sick affection. “ _Ajax Pax, the Silver Tongued Snake- “_

                “Oh, thank the gods.”

                It froze and perked up. “Yes?”

                Pax relaxed into his chair. “You’re going to monologue instead of kill me immediately. _That_ is a major relief!” He touched his chest and exhaled like Benedict Cumberbatch had just winked at him. “Are you here to bargain, threaten, or am I just biding my time before you cut off my head? Or turn me into an animal? I didn’t know if it would be _that_ kind of party.”

                The deity cocked its head to one side, utterly perplexed. “You’re not afraid of your nightmares?”

                “Oh! No-no, they are _terrifying!_ But uh…” He glanced around the room and shrugged. “I’ve been threatened by Morpheus in my dreams and uh… I gotta say, I’m not too impressed.”

                “Morpheus!” the god wailed in anger. The golden helmet and lion fur tarnished. It rippled and flickered into a black tar. The substance surged, flowing into a cyclopes one moment, a giant snake the next, and Ronald McDonald clown after. “Morpheus gets _all_ of the attention! He gets one little movie homage and a call out by Neil Gaiman and then everyone is mixing him up with dad—the great sleep god himself!”

                This was a dangerous gamble. Most gods were incredibly self-conscious about their position among the others. Axel taught him to use that to his advantage. _“They’re like children with superpowers,” he’d spit in disgust. “Treat them as such.”_

                Pax shook his head in sympathy. “He shouldn’t be allowed to steal your limelight.”

                "My darkness!" the god barked. "He steals my darkness! Every time someone goes to sleep they think Morph—"

                The god collapsed into a puddle of black gunk on the floor. Pax stared, unsure what happened. Was the black puddle being over dramatic? Can you have an overdramatic black puddle? He leaned forward in his seat to see if anything changed.

                Nope, still a black puddle.

                Kally gasped in some air. Joey collapsed on the table. Calex and Euna froze in confusion. Whatever was bothering them must have stopped.

                Until the liquid gathered back into a boar in a bowtie. As suddenly as they’d stopped, everyone resumed their fits of terror. With how ugly that watercolor bowtie was, Pax felt as though he should join them. The boar coughed, stood on two hooves and dusted himself off. _Someone, somewhere_ , Pax thought, _is having a nightmare about this highly esteemed boar._

                "Sorry," the boar said forlornly. "There's this horrible disorder—"

                "Narcolepsy?" Pax offered.

                "No, no! Far worse than narcolepsy! Conscilepsy: when you randomly awake up! One moment, I'll be terrorizing mortals or demigods in the dream world, the next thing you know I'm awake in my bed at home. Phanatasos and Morpheus—my two brothers—have it too." The boar took a seat where Axel should have sat and sipped at his untouched lemonade. Pax had to wonder how the seat held him up, or if a boar’s cheeks could create enough suction to use a straw.

                "It isn't so bad for Phanatasos. If you're having a weird dream and it kind of lags with a loading screen of _one moment please_ , that isn't anything out of the ordinary. When I'm working someone into a good scare over a few hours and everything just stops—" the boar huffed in exacerbation, "—most embarrassing!"

                "Yes, definitely." Pax nodded his head. "Um, and who are you?"

                The boar puffed out his chest and threw his hooves into the air. "I am the great Ikelos!"

                Pax stared.

                It lowered his hooves a little; the corners of its lips dipped. "Phobetor?"

                Pax shrugged.

                The boar sagged back into his chair. Annoyed, he grumbled, "God of Nightmares...."

                "Oh!" Pax perked up. At least he knew who he was dealing with. “I thought you could only show up as animals or monsters. How did you show up as the Leonis Caput? Or, um, Ronald McDonald. ”

                Phobetor grinned, showing off his tusks. "You're trying to say those aren't monsters?"

                "No, h—" Pax started to protest. _They are monsters to some_. Irritably, he folded his arms and sat back. "What do you want?"

                "To check up on you little cousin." The boar pressed one leg out to examine his hoof. "To make sure you're still loyal to my lovely aunt..." Phobetor lowered his leg and leaned forward to stare down Pax. "And to tell you, you have 24 hours to save Rachel Elizabeth Dare, the soon-to-be-reinstated Oracle."

                The task hung ominously in the air. Pax's brain went into hyper drive, trying to figure out what Phobetor could mean and why he chose to talk to Pax.

                Finally, Pax responded, "I can't do that, um…" He thought about what Phobetor said earlier: _my lovely aunt..._ Uncertainly he added, "big cuz..?"

                Shadows crept around the edges of the room. The boar huffed at them. Each shade took on a monstrous form and scattered out onto the porch. Pax had to wonder, if everyone else was stuck in their nightmare, was Axel's worst fear creeping up the hill towards him?

                "Nonsense," Phobetor stated. "She will be in Howe Caverns. The Python awaits."

                The fear wore off after the first minute of talking to a giant undercooked ham in his tuxedo best. Without the fear or the confusion of this god’s identity, Pax grew impatient. "Rachel hasn't been kidnapped yet. I don’t even think she’s at camp."

                Though Pax didn't know boars could look surprised, this one did. "Oh," Phobetor said, "Time is odd in Erebus. One moment Morpheus has you chasing a butterfly and time slips through your fingers; the next, I have you stuck in a test to see how many socks you can fold in a minute and clocks stop working." He shrugged. "You'll have 24 hours to save her after she's been kidnapped."

                "Why would you tell m...?” Pax rethought his question. He crooked one corner of his lip into a devil's grin. He rather enjoyed how effective the facial expression was on Kally. "Why should I?"

                "What?" Phobetor howled in fury.

                Pax repeated for clarity, "Why should I save Rachel? Aren't you going to keep plaguing us with nightmares? Give us a break: a dream catcher or something."

                The boar huffed. If Pax were a wolf, Phobetor might be about to show what three little piggies can do. The room trembled, reminding Pax they weren’t at Camp Half-Blood; they were in the dream lands. Blood roared in Pax's ears. He'd over stepped his boundaries. His fingers flickered to the smoke bombs on his utility belt. Not much good they would do. Could Phobetor make the smoke turn against him?

                Then the huff burst into a laugh, "A break! Oh! You're as sweet as your mother." He grinned, rising back to two legs. "So... now, what was it you wanted?"

                That was far too easy. Pax clutched his smoke bombs, forcing some bravado into his voice, "Release my trusted..." He glanced at Joey, Calex and Euna. "…acquaintances. Leave us alone if you want us to do...."

                What Axel and he had to do anyway? Why was Phobetor telling him this? Pax pressed forward, unsure what game this god played. "…this quest."

                Dimples appeared on either side of the boar's face. They expanded, skin folding until the skeletal grin was one that couldn't exist on any living animal. "Oh cousin..." Phobetor hissed. His skin liquidated back to black tar. The lights dimmed further in the room. A soggy heat choked Pax as the God of Nightmares whispered, "Trusted acquaintances? You don't have anyone you can trust... not even your own brother."

 

 

                Pax awoke with a start. All of them did.

                Cool plastic pressed against his sore forehead. Sweat soaked the table around his skin, leaving a nice "O" of condensed water when he sat up, like the ping-pong table and he had a rather intimate encounter. He clutched his head, glancing around the room.

                No giant boar, tar monsters, or Ronald McDonald. The meeting room's lights kept their blinding, florescent hue. Somewhere nearby, he could smell grape juice. The others woke from their nightmares with the same perplexed grogginess, except Calex. He shot to his feet, knocking over his chair.

                "It's okay Calex. You're awake now."

                Piper made Pax jump. She stood behind him with two boys. Although her tone was meant to be comforting, Pax fumbled to withdraw his headphones. He liked charm speakers about as much as he liked banshees, but at least he could be comforted that the latter would kill him.

                "Piper!" Calex trembled. He searched the whole room, breath short, crouched in preparation to run. “What happened? Where—” He choked off the words.

                "You all fell asleep and we couldn't wake you. I ran to get Clovis and Nico—"

                Kally inhaled sharply in alarm when she saw them. When Pax looked at her, she scowled at the floor. Her cheeks looked like she'd spent one too many months in a tanning bed, giving her a healthy Irish tan.

                One of the boys, a brunette with pale skin, blushed as red.

                A sinking feeling hit Pax; it was like his ribcage said, _na, you’re too heavy_ , and dumped his heart into his stomach with a, _good luck swimming in digestive acid!_ He wondered how they knew each other and speculated on why they both reddened. He doubted it was because she’d thrown up on him at a baseball game, like he hoped. Not that it mattered. Axel hadn’t showed any special interest in her, right?

                Piper went through the introductions that were getting _really_ boring by now. Next time someone pointed out how old they were and asked how they survived, he was going to shout, “like this!” and throw a smoke bomb to tumble away, laughing maniacally. Either that or he’d find a walnut and induce an allergic reaction to get out of the Big House. _Camp Consoler, I’m overdramatic and in anaphylactic shock. May I please leave early?_

                Apparently, Nico—the boy who looked like he might scream at a Hot Topic sale—and the blond cow-looking boy—Clovis?—had entered Kally’s dream and valiantly rescued her from a monster that had been plaguing her for months. Hearing that made Pax feel _way_ better about their blushing. Especially since they both stumbled and choked up over the next part of the story until Nico explained that they thought it was connected to the camp’s problems. Probably about as connected to the camp’s problems as them getting dream ice cream together, or having dinner on the beach.

                Over the last month, many campers had nightmares about monsters or giant animals. They got worse when Calex first arrived and it amplified this morning with— _ta-da!—_ Pax, Axel, Merry, and Kally’s arrival. When Clovis asked about the dreams that the six of them had, Pax decided it was time to end the conversation.

                “Did anyone else see the giant pig?” he asked, glancing around. His trusted acquaintances looked skeptically at him. No one ever believed him when he was serious. Merry was the only one who smiled. “No takers? Well, in that case—the mortal terror of being threatened by a piece of raw bacon has left me starving.” He patted his stomach. “Who else says we slam the breaks on this happy conversation and get some breakfast before we have another fit of narcolepsy?”

                “I could go for a nap,” Clovis yawned in agreement. He was either a masochist, or unaffected by Phobetor’s powers. Or maybe he liked dreams about undercooked bacon.

                Kally and the other new campers relaxed in relief at the thought. All of them wanted to talk about their nightmares about as much as they wanted to talk about a tooth drilling where the dentist mixed up the anesthesia with peroxide.

                Except Nico. He scowled. “We need to figure out what’s going on. Clovis and I are pretty sure it’s Phobetor in league with another god—” Pax chose not to confirm that. Though there had only been Phobetor in his dream. Did the others dream about someone else? Maybe a giant Easter bunny with a hatchet? “—and the frequency of their attention… it’s like they’re trying to keep you from dreaming something else.”

                Piper glanced at the bags under Calex, Euna, and Joey’s eyes. She touched Calex’s shoulder. His fist immediately unclenched. “Maybe we can talk about it later, when Percy, Annabeth and Jason wake up,” she suggested. “Rachel is supposed to be flying in from Clarion Ladies Academy this afternoon. We can ask her if she has any ideas too.”

                At the mention of the Oracle, Pax frowned. _You don’t have anyone you can trust._ Pax debated whether he should listen to a well dressed boar or tell this group everything. Unfortunately, his instincts agreed. None of them would sympathize if he explained she _had_ to be kidnapped for his quest to work.

                Nico glowered. As though it took conscious effort for him to realize he was glaring, his lips twitched into a straight line. “You’re right,” he sighed. “We should assign the new three a guide and give them a tour around camp.”

                Piper grinned at him.“That’s supposed to be my line.”

                Air puffed up in Pax’s cheeks and he popped it out—an idiosyncrasy of all Santiago’s children. Excitement swelled in his chest, making his ribcage decide, _eh, maybe you’re lighter than I thought. You can chill here heart_ All the stories he had heard about this camp danced in his head along with visions of sugarplums. Normally, one of the big seven showed new children around: Annabeth, Piper, or Jason for Camp Half-Blood. From what he heard, Annabeth said Percy was a bad influence on new campers, so he wouldn’t. The idea filled him with giddiness and dread.

                The camp couldn’t distract him too much though. Pax had to get through everything on his mother's to-do list before tomorrow morning. And after tomorrow morning, he’d have an Oracle to save.

 

 


	9. Kalypso: Dragons Run Off Oil and Tabasco Sauce

 

 

                Kally hoped she’d never meet her Sexy Goth Prince again. The fact that he was here, clearly an important member of the camp, and clearly had a keen memory: that stained her cheeks red. Worst of all, as soon as Merry noticed, she jabbed at Kally’s side with the persistence of a wasp.

                Exiting the Big House was like exiting a room full of pepper spray. The initial gasp of air seemed a relief, but the lasting effects made her wanting to splash water on her face and rub at her eyes.

                “So who was he?” Merry asked and sang the next question in a luscious note. “What else happened in your dream?”

                No questions about the nightmares or discussing what could be going on. Straight to the topic of boys. This felt like a bad sitcom.

                “Shut up!” Kally squeaked in panic. “He can probably hear you.” They weren’t that far from the Big House’s door. Chiron chatted with Nico and Clovis on the porch, though Clovis looked about to fall over the handrail. Something told Kally that kid needed to be transported in a carrying litter back to his cabin. Kally could envision it: a purple bed, carried by four Gorgons labeled _Such Great Transport, You’ll be Blinded by its Brilliance_. Except it would likely be lopsided since she was pretty sure there were only three Gorgons. Okay, Gorgon transport: bad idea.

                Piper, who exited with them, could definitely hear Kally’s squeak. A frown tugged at the corner of her lips, like she wanted to tell Kally something but withheld. She was distracted by something near the hill.

                Activity raged all about the Big House. Piper said this was early for Camp Half-Blood, but the energy felt routine. Torches and flashlights flickered all about the camp. A crew of half a dozen campers covered in soot and grime had somehow lifted the silver dragon corpse onto a platform with wheels. Several pegasi tugged the heavy load around the hill, whinnying in complaint. Kally had the horrifying idea of a Dragon Clause pulled by 8 pegasi, giving all the bad children fireballs for Christmas.

                Kally jumped backwards, right into Pax.

                Another _live_ dragon loomed near the cart. Those coppery scales reflected harsh tones each time a flashlight glinted off it, like a steampunk disco ball. The tips of its tail wrapped around a pine tree at the top of the hill. A golden carpet hung over a branch beside it. That was the tree she thought was wrapped in gold. It had been wrapped in gold, just with dragon wrapping paper. The massive body tottered closer to the campers. None of the demigods paid him mind. Curiously, it dipped its head toward the cart, investigating the corpse of his mechanical brethren.

                The pegasi panicked.

                A massive, bald guy tried to calm them. Despite his attempts, some took to the skies. Two bolted in the opposite direction.

                Before the cart could be torn in two different directions, the guy cut the reigns.

                The campers covered in soot shrieked. Though they’d been trying to avoid the apex of the hill, the cart was still on a slant. The wheels whined as the cart started to descend.

                A desperate camper lunged at the tattered reigns with a peg. He managed to slip it through the ropes and into the ground, hefting his full body weight into it. The cart stopped though the boy trembled with the effort.

                Pax jumped in excitement. “Holy Tyche! Matt! Matthias Sverre Hanson!” he cried.

                At the full name, the camper shot straight to his feet, releasing the peg. Without his additional weight, the cart ripped free of the peg and rolled down the hill.

                “Do you always cause problems?” Merry asked, amused as the campers resumed panic.

                Pax looked too delighted to answer. He hopped from foot to foot, reminding Kally of the weasels’’ war dance.

                Matt didn’t seem to mind when the shouts of appreciation turned to irritated growls and angry curses. He barreled towards Kally’s group. “Ajax Pax! Here to relax!” he called between deep gasps. Once he got closer, Kally could make out his features better. He had a pudgy face with brilliant blue eyes that seemed to explode from behind his long blond hair. If Thor had been chubby as a teenager, this was his awkward ninth grade yearbook picture.

                Pax broke into a run to meet him. Kally could imagine flowers sprouting at their feet and music crescendoing as Matt dive tackled Pax onto the ground.

                He crushed the significantly smaller demigod in a hug. “Dude! Dude! I didn’t think I’d ever see you again!”

                “Man, who thought you’d be on the dark side after everything went to Hades!” Pax laughed.

                As they walked over to join them, Euna rushed to help the Demeter campers that were trying to calm the copper dragon. It seemed interested in some four legged, flying snacks. Joey sighed and dragged her feet after.

                One of Piper’s hands covered her mouth. She ran to Matt and Pax’s side. “Where did you find that dragon?” she demanded, eyes wide with wonder.

                Matt helped Pax up. The blond shoved at Pax’s shoulder. “The Romans said this kid and his three new friends helped take it out. This is the closest thing we’ve ever found to—”

                “Festus,” Piper finished.

                Matt nodded his head. Kally guessed that meant something to everyone else, because they didn’t blink at the name. She nodded her head like she knew what was going on, hoping to get context clues though knowing it would be about as helpful as a fork at a burger joint.

                “This is like a prototype, way rougher than Festus, but the similarities are impossible to miss! Nyssa said it even runs off a mix of oil and Tabasco sauce!” Matt beamed.

                Kally made a memo to herself: dragons run off Tabasco sauce and make campers really emotional.

                “Do you think it… it could have been made by…” Piper’s eyes watered. Her empty hand hugged herself. Calex, who had been standing back with Merry and Kally, frowned. At her tears, he walked over and squeezed her shoulder.

                Matt opened up his greasy hands helplessly. “We won’t know until we find the control disk. We’ve been scouring the hills and fields all morning but we haven’t…” His eyes narrowed as they refocused on Pax. “…found anything.”

A control disk for the dragon? Kally touched the Argonaut statue in her messenger bag. She remembered the other disk—the one silver as starlight—that Pax hid in the trunk in the van. There wasn’t enough information about the dragon or… Festus? The other dragon for her to decide to tell them. She didn’t feel right ratting the Pax boys out without giving them a chance to explain. Besides, with her luck, the Pax trunk had some kind of enchantment on it that prevented others from seeing it, so people would just think she was crazy. She’d have to add that to the growing list of _conversations-in-private-that-will-make-me-look-really-suspicious._

                “I can’t believe Reyna didn’t tell me this immediately. I need to find Jason,” Piper mumbled, wiping away her tears to reveal a smile.

                Matt shrugged. “I think she’s been a little busy with the wounded all morning and with—uh—Clarisse. If you need a tour guide though,” Matt slung a hand around Pax’s shoulder, “I can take the new meat off your hands so you can get your Mr. Handsome.” He must have found this idea preferable to rerolling the several ton cart—which had slowed at the base of the hill and was now surrounded by grumbling half-bloods—back up.

                “Thank you Matt,” Piper sputtered.

                Calex dropped his hand off her shoulder. “Do you want me to come along?” he asked in concern.

                “No—thank you Calex. Could you do me a favor? Could you ask around for Annabeth? She must be up with all the commotion.”

                Calex’s jaw dropped. “Annabeth? Annabeth Chase?”

                “Yes, I’m sorry you didn’t get to meet her yesterday. She’s got curly blond hair—ask anyone in camp and they’ll know who you’re talking about. Tell her to meet at Percy’s table for breakfast,” Piper said. She lowered her hands, squeezing both Calex and Matt’s. “Thank you again!” And walked off before he answered.

                “Blimey,” Calex muttered. He followed after in awe.

                Once they were gone, Matt waved back to the campers huddled around the cart at the base of the hill. “Gotta escort new campers for Piper!” he shouted.

                They looked too surprised at the new campers comment to get mad about being left with the cart. For now.

                With the added distance and the attempts by the Demeter children, the copper dragon decided the pegasi and his silver counterpart were too far away. It hunkered down, waiting for them to roll the cart up to him.

                After a few steps, Matt’s arm tightened around Pax’s shoulder. “You wouldn’t happen to know where that control disk is, would you? That sounds like just the important type of thing a Pax boy would weasel into his hands.” He poked Pax’s chest.

                “Hey!” Pax protested, “Don’t say weasel like it’s a bad thing!”

                Matt checked his baggy shirt, as though worried Hunnie and Baller would appear. When the weasels proved absent, he raised an eyebrow at Pax. Kally wondered if they were still in the fields or if they were strategically storing dead things in Pax’s extra clothes in the van.

                “Why do you always assume I stole something when it disappears?” Pax clicked his tongue. “You have plenty of healthy Hermes children skulking about. You’ll offend their dishonor with such accusations.”

                Matt laughed. “Oh Ajax Pax, still the Silver Tongued Snake.”

                That seemed a fitting name for Pax, except he’d be more manageable in snake form, or so Kally imagined. You could put him into a glass case and he, Hunnie and Baller could try to attack each other through an invisible barrier.

Matt led them across a stream, towards a cluster of buildings, organized in the shape of a winged horseshoe. Even in the flicker of torchlight, flashlight, and the dim suggestion of dawn, she could tell the structures varied. Two seemed particularly luminous, shimmering gold and silver. Another had two green torches burning outside. A bonfire blazed in the center. Statues scattered around the open grass.

                “I hate to break up your loving inter-reunion,” Merry smiled to herself at her mix of interrogation and reunion, “But where do you two know each other from?” She was either unimpressed or uninterested in the approaching cabins.

                “We got way back—” Matt started to laugh but caught himself, “—in school.” He patted Pax’s shoulder unconvincingly.

                “You said you and Axel were no schooled,” Kally said.

                “We did no school together,” Pax answered. She was pretty sure that wasn’t a thing, “But when I was _really_ little, my grandma made me go to school.” Pax sighed nostalgically. “My teacher used to whip me on a weekly basis. Those were the good days.”

                If those were the good days, Kally wasn’t sure she wanted to know what happened on Pax’s mediocre days. Would getting attacked by a dragon be considered a mediocre day? Then she remembered capital punishment was illegal in American and berated herself for believing him, _again._

                Merry shook her head and chuckled. “Shifty and a bad liar. Pax, you keep getting better and better.”

                As they approached, Merry focused more on the cabins. Campers darted out, most heading back towards the hill, likely to see the dragons and hear about the Romans. A familiar teen in a white and red beanie raced to a grey cabin with an owl carved on the doorway. Calex was _fast_. Kally didn’t know when he’d started to run ahead of them, but he was faster than a satyr with members of People Eating Tasty Animals in pursuit.

                Once they got closer, Merry hummed happily. A specific cabin caught her attention, one that looked like it was held together with grape vines. “If you’ll excuse me, shifty boys,” Merry nodded her head to them, “Kally” she did the same to Kally, “I’m going to go meet my brother.”

                “You’re leaving me with them?!” Kally cried. She bit her tongue, not meaning to be so loud.

                “You’ll have more fun without me,” Merry said with a smile. “That way you can’t hide behind me when people try to talk to you.” Kally wanted a rebuttal, but that was _exactly_ what she’d planned to do. “Terror builds character right?”

                “Hm. Don’t think that’s how that saying goes,” Matt stated.

                On multiple occasions, Merry had threatened to leave Kally to talk to knew people on her own. She didn’t think she’d do it _now,_ after they’d been attacked by a dragon and rescue-napped by the Pax Extraction Team. It was like their last homecoming, when Merry had promised to help Kally with her makeup. Merry was running late, so left Kally some makeup and a note that read: _the eye shadow goes on your eyes._

                Pax slung his open arm over Kally’s shoulder to pull her into a line with Matt. She was ready for them to break into a Greek dance number, maybe one with a flip and a song about Odysseus. “We’re nice guys. I haven’t called in my nine drachma and eleven Reese’s Sticks debt yet.” He nodded his head in assurance. “I’m waiting until it’s least convenient for you.”

                “At least he’s considerate.” Merry smiled. She patted Kally’s open shoulder. “You go have fun girl. After dinner we should talk about…” She touched her face, where there’d been a bruise before Apollo’s blessing took hold. “Family stuff.”

                With the confidence of a crazy claiming kingship over an asylum, Merry strode towards Dionysus’s cabin.

                Kally frowned miserably. She glanced over at Pax’s devilish smirk and realized he still had that arm around her. She jerked away. He seemed much calmer now that he was away from the Romans. Embarrassed, she felt the edges of his duster jacket. Immediately, she took it off and jammed it into his chest.

                Pax exhaled with the hit, one much harder than she’d intended. “Ow! You know, a ‘thanks for the jacket Pax! You’re the coolest demigod here,’ would have also been acceptable.”

                “Wait,” she glanced around. Even in the dim lighting, she could see the grass and trees were a brilliant green, contrasting with the browns and oranges exterior to the camp. “You haven’t been shivering. How aren’t you cold here? How is it not cold in here?”

                “Climate control,” Matt supplied, “allows for year-round training and strawberry growing.”

                “Strawberry growing?” she repeated.

                “It’s how we fund the camp.”

                “Oh, uh, that makes sense.” Much more sense than offering pegasi rides to passing strangers, as Kally had suspected.

                Matt clapped his hands together and shuffled them, searching around the camp to figure out how to conduct this tour. “Those are the cabins… I really ought to let Will show you around yours…” He stuck out his two pointer fingers, laced the bottom six and aimed his hands at Kally. He turned the point to Pax. “And… you’re never going to be claimed are you?”

                “Nope!” Pax said cheerfully. “Nice _hand_ gun.”

                “Shut up Pax. Conner and Travis will show you around the Hermes cabin. You belong there anyway.” Though the words sounded condemning, there wasn’t any malice in them. Just amusement. He released his hands and shuffled them again. “Alright! Who wants to see where all the dying happens!”

 


	10. Calex: She Noticed Me! (or: In Which Percy Fights with a Twelve Year Old)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because they can't build cabins fast enough, a lot of campers are being clumped with children of similar parenthood. (Ex. children of Morpheus stay in Hypno's cabin.) This doesn't work so well for Percy Jackson...  
> Meanwhile, Calex nearly has a heart attack when he gets to fangirl over his favorite of the Seven heroes.

 

                Over the past summer, once Calex started to read the letters about Camp Half-Blood, he couldn’t stop. Some nights he’d stay up well past 2 in the morning, a torch[1] in hand and a sheet over his head, devouring the information about the Second Titan War and the war against Gaea. Tom would call him an idiot in the morning, bemoaning that he hadn’t slept enough. Why, Calex never understood. Because of his age, Tom didn’t need to get a summer job like Calex did, so he could sleep in until their mom realized he wasn’t up.

                Now, _at_ Camp Half-Blood, he was looking for _the_ Annabeth Chase—the hero who single handedly took out Arachne with her wit, who traveled to the depths of Tartarus with Percy Jackson, and was the architect for Olympus. He’d rushed to her cabin, talked to her brother Mitchell, and ran back and forth across the entire camp, only to be told she was already at the dining pavilion.

                With the Hephaestus campers and several Athena campers dragging the silver dragon into camp boundaries and the Apollo and Ares campers running in and out of the infirmary, Calex’s sprints looked as normal as they would at football practice. When he reached the dining pavilion, he was relieved that he hadn’t broken a sweat.

                Breakfast would be an understatement. This was a feast. From the random Romans mixing in with the Greek tables, it was more of a _shove-it-in-your-face_ type feast. The Hermes cabin, Aphrodite cabin, and a smatter of other campers were electrified with news from the Greek victory. The commotion reminded him of the streets after Arsenal won a match at the Emirates Stadium.[2]

                Calex slowed down, not wanting to look like he was bringing news like “school’s been canceled forever!” As he walked past Cabin ten’s table, Drew winked at him. As usual, she managed to make the orange T-shirt look posh.

                “Morning Auntie Drew.” He smiled back. He pointedly glanced to the Hermes table, where Conner and Travis were devising a godly acne cure to sell to the new campers. Upon seeing him, Conner waved back with his little pinkie.

                “’ello Gov’ner!”

                When Calex glanced back at Drew, she scowled at her breakfast plate. Since Calex could ruin her reputation with a few careful words about which person she might or might not fancy, she wouldn’t dare hit on him again. Now that was sorted, he continued towards his mission.

                There, at Cabin three’s table, sat a teenager with black hair and green eyes. He leaned heavily on one hand, elbow pinning the white tablecloth down like someone might want to pull it out as a magic trick and he was in a no-magic mood. His other hand held a fork with an impaled blue waffle. In between scowling at a twelve-year-old girl with black hair beside him, he chewed furiously.

                As Calex approached, awestruck and choked with excitement, he overheard their conversation. He figured it would be about something brilliant.

                “I’m the daughter of the goddess of violent sea storms!” the twelve-year-old girl snapped. “ _Not_ of Poseidon,” she said the name with disgust.

                “A: that’s a mouthful.” As if to emphasize the point, Percy tore a chunk out of the waffle. “‘Son of the Sea God’ sounds way cooler. B: How?” He set the fork down to examine her with the same vehemence he’d treat a final exam. “I’ve met Kym and, uh, she wasn’t very nice, kinda like you. Oh, right, and _she lives at the bottom of the ocean_.”

                “Kymopoieia!” the girl screamed at him, “Her name isn’t Kym!” She rose to stomp her foot and storm away. Storm was the appropriate verb. Several glasses of liquid from the Hermes table evaporated and circled in a raging mist about her as she passed.

                Calex stood near the table, stunned.

                Until Percy noticed him. Immediately, he went from angry to smiling. “Hey! You’re one of the new kids.” He thought for a moment. “Alex? Piper told me about you in an Iris Message. Sorry we came in too late last night to say hi. We got caught up fighting some dracanae. You know how it is.”

                Calex felt like an idiot. He didn’t know if he should call him sir, correct him on his name, or laugh with a, “Oh, dracanae? I could talk all day about that lot.”

                A female voice saved him. “Were you picking a fight with a _twelve_ -year-old, Seaweed Brain?”

                When Calex saw the speaker, walking out from behind him, his heart beat stopped. Though he could see the mouths of various teenagers move, everything went silent. A hair tie wrestled her blond, curly hair into a ponytail. Her eyes were grey like his, though icy with calculation. She paused to examine him, but not with the normal glint of flirtatious attraction as he was accustomed. No, her gaze analyzed him like a unit in a strategy game, one she knew she’d already won.

                “She started it,” Percy grumbled. “ _Someone_ —” he scowled over table twelve. Mr. D lounged with several satyrs attending him, “—thought it made sense to a daughter of Kym in cabin three, since Kym and Poseidon have such a loving relationship.”

                From what Calex had heard, this was a problem for all the cabins. They couldn’t design a cabin for every god or goddess fast enough, so they put demigods with similar temperament and powers into the same rooms. Putting a child of Morpheus in Hypnos’s cabin didn’t seem to cause any problems, but others were more complicated.

                “Where’s Tyson?” Annabeth asked. “I thought I heard he and Ella came in with the Romans.”

                Percy folded his arms and glowered. “That little twelve-year-old made him cry as soon as he came into the room. I tried to comfort him, but he refused to come to breakfast, so I decided to tell her to play nice with her family.”

                “So you haven’t heard _anything_ that’s happened this morning?” she demanded.

                Percy’s fork hung out of his lips as though he were dumbfounded. The corner of his mouth twitched. Calex could tell he was holding off a grin; he got the distinct feeling Percy _loved_ making Annabeth flustered.

                Like Percy didn’t exist, she turned to Calex, resting one hand on her hip. “Calex McKenzie?” she asked.

                Calex felt his heart flutter and was furious for actually thinking, _she knows my name!_

                “Yes?” Calex stuttered out. He immediately coughed and held out a hand. “Annabeth Chase?” This introduction felt backwards, but saying her name was like biting into a gypsy tart—the sweetness was almost too much to handle.

                They shook hands and Calex had to make sure he didn’t jump at her touch.

                “You alright buddy?” Percy asked.

                Calex nodded. “Absobloodylootley.”

                Percy blinked.

                “Did Piper send you to tell me about the Silver Festus?” Annabeth asked.

                The fork fell out of Percy’s mouth. “The Silver _what?!_ ”

                They caught him up on the Roman attack with the Greek victory by—accidentally—using Piper’s voice. Then about how, moments before, the Romans and four new well-over-thirteen demigods had taken out an automaton that—according to Jake—was a cruder version of Festus, the bronze automaton dragon that had disappeared the same day of Leo Valdez’s supposed death.

                During the explanation, Piper and Jason met them at the table. Piper thanked Calex for telling Annabeth to meet them there. Calex didn’t have the embarrassed chance to say he hadn’t with all the hugs and high fives exchanged. Percy told them to all take a seat at his table.

                Chatter buzzed around the campers present. While they often made exceptions when the Romans came, according to the scrolls Calex read, the last time someone sat at an unassigned table was when Annabeth talked to Percy about the Labyrinth years ago. He felt more than honored, though the feeling was crushed when Jason pointedly sat between Piper and him.

                From the clench in Jason’s jaw and forward attention, Calex didn’t think Jason even realized he’d done it. _Brilliant_ , Calex thought, _I’ve unwittedly made enemies with the son of Jupiter. It could be worse. It could be the most powerful god—oh wait._

                They glanced over at Mr. D to see if he’d turn them into dolphins or strawberries for sale. He was too engrossed with berating a satyr to notice.

                A frazzled wood nymph stumbled over carrying four plates of food along her arm. She tossed them onto the table with the same ferocity of an ultimate Frisbee game. Once done, she huffed.

                All of them jumped to catch the plates before they slipped over the table edge. “What’s wrong Olive?” Jason asked, still clutching his bundle of brisket.

                She folded her arms. “This breakfast is so disorganized! None of the cabins came in order except ten and eleven. Half the wood nymphs are busy flirting with the Romans instead of working—” She cocked her head towards several elf-like girls flirting with several Romans. One—Dakota?—went to pull out something from his belt to offer it to her, and freaked when he didn’t find what he sought. “—and Juniper isn’t helping me because she and Grover are off fighting—“

                “Grover’s here!?” Percy asked, excited.

                Olive glared at him.

                He shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t get to see him much because he’s always off doing the save-the-wild thing.”

                “That’s exactly what they’re arguing about,” she grunted. “Satyrs: always so excited to frolic and cavort. Do they think about being rooted? No!”

                “Olive!” Mr. D motioned her to his table.

                She fumed, glanced at Percy like this was his fault, then ran to the wine god.

                Percy and Jason shrugged at one another before the group continued.

                Calex and Piper explained how he and other five out of the new seven had collapsed on the ping-pong table in the Big House. No one could wake them. Nico and Clovis couldn’t enter their dreams. He was grateful when Piper diverted the conversation away from the nightmares by mentioning that Axel refused to enter camp.

                “I talked to him before I came here,” Annabeth said, frowning. She glanced at Piper. “Did he really almost kill ten legionaries?”

                “Ten legionaries?” Jason repeated in shock. “Are they alright?”

                “Reyna and Will are tending to them. Everyone is stable and have their plasters,” Calex reassured them. He’d been able to check in the infirmary when he dropped off Mark.

                The four of them stared at him.

                “Plaster… plastered? … Do you mean Dakota?” Jason asked slowly, glancing to where the centurion was emptying all of his pockets.

                “Oh!” Calex sighed. “I meant they have their bandages.” He really hoped the “sophisticated” accent distracted them from how dimwitted he felt.

                Relief swelled in him when Piper took the chance to continue. “Maybe not ten legionaries, but it was brutal. Did he say where he trained? He told Reyna he was part of some kind of group that didn’t follow the Greek or Roman gods.”

                Annabeth snorted, “He wouldn’t speak much at all. He told me to save my ‘Olympic propaganda’ for his little brother.”

                “That sounds familiar.” Percy toyed with a pen he’d pulled from his pocket. “You said he was about our age?”

                Annabeth nodded. An unspoken message passed between them. “I had the same hunch. So I took the liberty to—”

                “Hey!”

                A girl bounced up, out of breath, with curly black hair and shining green eyes. She smiled as she stopped in front of Annabeth, hands on her knees. The bracelets jangling on her wrists were coated in green runes. “You’re having a counselor meeting… at Percy’s table… and didn’t invite me?” she said in between breathes.

                Calex blinked, glancing around. Everyone here _was_ a cabin counselor. If there was an Eros cabin, he’d be the counselor by default.               

                “Perfect timing. What did you find?” Annabeth asked.

                Lou Ellen stood, leaned back to stretch her spine and regain her breath. “You were right... There were magic runes all over the exterior of that van and some nasty mist work on the inside. I couldn’t see through all of it, but that van looks like Ares’ gym locker—it’s an _armory_ on wheels.” That didn’t settle well with anyone at the table. Jason shifted uncomfortably. “On top of that,” Her eyes twinkled, “two Mist forms are guarding it.”

                “Mist forms?” Calex asked.

                “Yea,” Percy cleared his throat, looking equally confused. “Explain Mist forms for, uh, our new member here.”

                “They’re magical creations. I can make rudimentary ones, but these were _years_ beyond my ability.” She giggled, clapping her hands, “And the best part—they were _weasels!_ ”

                “That sounds a lot like Trivia—uh—Hecate,” Jason said, quickly correcting the Romanized name.

                “Oh, that’s not the end of it,” she said.

                Annabeth’s frown returned.

                “The boy working on the van, he could see right through my Mist when I tried to approach. He _waved_ at me.” She laughed like she’d pay to see that magic trick. “To make runes on the van like that and see through my Mist when he had no idea I would be there, he’d have to be a magic user closer to Circe’s level.”

                Percy frowned. A wave of queasiness flowed out of him and hit Calex’s emotional center hard. He knew he’d read something about Circe, but couldn’t remember what. As Lou Ellen ran off to try and gather more information, he prompted, “Who?”

                “She’s a witch,” Percy explained. “She turned me into a guinea pig.”

                Calex blinked at him.

                “I got better obviously,” Percy said. He turned back to the others, “You, Piper and Leo once brought a warship into former enemy territory and it worked out okay.”

                Annabeth sighed, “After Leo fired it on them…”

                Piper, Jason, and Calex glanced at each other.

                Jason piped up first, “What are you two talking about?”

                “I think they’re children of Hecate,” Annabeth explained. For a daughter of Athena, that might have been the final puzzle piece. That was more like dumping another puzzle into the pile for Calex.

                Hesitantly, Piper said, “Pax did say he thought his father was mortal. And Kally mentioned that he could change what he looked like, something a child of Hecate could probably do.”

                Annabeth nodded. “Axel said they survived with a group that didn’t need the Greek or Roman gods. Hecate led her children against the Olympians in the Second Titan War. If Axel is about our age—”

                “He might have been recruited right when Kronos was looking for half-bloods,” Jason finished. His blue eyes widened with alarm. Tension straightened his back, if it could go straighter. “You think they used to be part of Kronos’s army?”

                Annabeth shrugged. “Just a hunch, but it would explain Axel’s resentment and both of the brothers’ hesitancy to talk.”

                “We have to do some kind of investigation,” Jason said. “They’re connected to these nightmares. They might have even been the ones who stole the coals from Hestia’s hearth. A master magic user could easily have sneaked in when the gods were helping us fight the giants.”

                “I don’t want to jump to conclusions yet.” Annabeth folded her hands in front of her thoughtfully. “While I would like to keep an eye on Axel while he’s outside the barriers, being former members of Kronos’s army doesn’t make Axel or Pax evil. They might just be scared and trying to start anew, like the other ones.”

                “Other ones?” Jason asked. Calex feared Jason’s eyes might fall out if he was startled further. “How many other ones do you have at camp? What kind of trial did you put them through?”

                “Uh, no trial bro. Remember, we’re not the Romans,” Percy said. “Most of them were mad at their parents with good reason. They reformed, so we’re all cool now.”

                Piper took Jason’s hand warily. Slowly, she asked, “What did the Romans do?”

                Jason slummed. “They’re considered defectors usually. Most were. They do get a trial, but the judge has to be picked from the Senate…”

                “And most members of the Senate lost family in the Battle of Mount Orthys,” Annabeth guessed. Her expression darkened. “That’s not much of a trial.”

                Jason nodded. “Unless they have connections high in the Senate, they’re lucky if they get banishment. Though Legionaries don’t have to hunt down defectors, if Reyna or any of the others found out they were here…”

                Relief emitted from Percy and Annabeth. The timing confused Calex—then he remembered that Jason came from New Rome. Although they’d been through a lot with the _pontifex maximus_ , Calex guessed they still weren’t sure which battles Jason would take a Roman attitude on and which he’d act Greek.

                All of his summer letters discussed the Greek side of events, so Calex didn’t know much about the Romans, but he could guess their punishments weren’t fun.

                Annabeth sighed and slumped back into her seat. “Nightmares, the coals, Kronos’s army—Percy.” She stared at him. “We were supposed to be taking next week off to look at the university in New Rome.”

                Percy held out his hands, palm up. “College?” he said looking at one hand. “Fate of the World?”He looked at the other and waved them up and down like the scales of a balance.

                Annabeth grinned and pushed down on the one he’d labeled _college_ to tip the scale. “We’ve gotta keep our priorities straight, right?” she teased.

_Good gods_ , thought Calex, _She_ ** _is_** _Hermione Granger!_

                An unspoken agreement went through the group to keep the Kronos army conversation quiet. They turned their attention to lighter topics. Calex became painfully aware he was intruding on a long-sought reunion between old friends. When they rose to drop some of their food into the fire, Calex said he wanted to check on Mark in the clinic. He almost squealed when Annabeth welcomed him to Camp Half-Blood on parting.

                As he walked away, a sense of urgency sunk his stomach. He paused.

                Sunlight melted over the trees surrounding the camp, dousing the dining pavilion in splashes of gold and red. If no one was in critical condition, Will would have paused action in the infirmary to lead his cabin for sun salutations. The Hermes and Mercury campers laughed. An Ares camper walked by with his arm in a cast. They dumped pink paint on the plaster, starting a small squabble. Woods nymphs and his cousins at the Aphrodite table flirted shamelessly with the Romans that joined them.

                Everyone felt happy and at home. His blessing—curse—had faded in intensity, but Camp Half-Blood was saturated with a sense of tranquility and comfort and… assurance. These half-bloods had fought for their lives, won, and knew they could do it again.

This was _his_ new home. The Aphrodite campers were his new family. After what happened in Kakata, he couldn’t go back to St Albans. His stepfather and Gretchen wouldn’t want him.

                There wasn’t a bed post for him to punch. He wouldn’t let himself cry anymore. He would earn his place here. He’d make up for how much of a coward he’d been.

                Mist rose from the woods to accompany the sunlight. It made the camp look like a painting, something he’d studied on a school trip to the Somerset House’s gallery. Fragile: the camp was fragile. Dread made him sick. He clutched his bow, _Soul Pain,_ still strapped to his back. Something told him he’d need to earn his place here sooner than he’d be ready.

 

 

 

[1] Flashlight

[2] Arsenal’s home stadium!


	11. Ajax: At Least Here, They Won’t Throw Me into a Volcano

                 Let’s say you’re a kid that went to one of those disciplinary schools that overlooked beating people with rulers and duct taping people to their chairs just before lunch break. Then someone gives you a full paid for trip to one of those fancy, rich academies, where the lunch menu is tailored per person’s needs and there’s that one girl who turns her nose up at it and says, “ _Uh, the fillet mignon? That is so drab!”_ You’d feel resentful and a little sad your school is utterly pathetic by comparison, but, simultaneously, you’re going to be thinking _eh, when in Rome, live like an emperor._

                That was how Pax felt. Or at least, that was what Pax figured he felt. He hadn’t been to school since they moved from Belize and when he snuck into New Rome, he certainly didn’t do as the Romans did.

                The climbing wall with the lava, fireballs, and random magical mines that exploded on contact—it was cute. He remembered one time when Ethan Nakamura threw him down the edge of an active volcano for “training.” What Ethan neglected to mention to their superiors after was that Pax and a Mercury girl had glued a little golden Apple logo with the words _iPatch_ over Ethan’s pirate-like covering. Pax neglected to mention that –while climbing up the side of said active volcano—Ethan had stepped on his Mercury friend’s hand so she’d lose her grip and fall into the lava. Ethan and Pax didn’t like each other much after that, but boys will be boys, goofing around and tossing each other off the side of cliffs like the best of friends.

                Everything was still super cool at Camp Half-Blood. Camp Othrys definitely didn’t have the valet Pegasus service offered by some bald dude named Butch. For being so proud of their monster-stocked forest, Pax found it a little lacking. He imagined himself as that stuffy rich girl, turning up her nose, _“Uh, dracanae? That is so drab! Get me a drakin!”_

                However, the look on Kally’s face was worth it. Each time Matt pointed out a special spot—where the campers crafted their swords, where they had chariot racing and had started javelin throwing, where they played volleyball—

                “Magic volleyball?” Pax asked, bouncing. “Is the ball explosive?”

                “Yea, we make it out of Greek fire,” Matt said.

                “Really?!”

                “No. No, that would be _really_ stupid.”

                Pax pouted.

                But every time Matt showed Kally one of the metaphorical chocolate bites that made Camp Half-Blood awesome, her eyes sparkled. Several times, she would press her hand to her mouth to cover up how it had opened.

                “I think you dropped something,” Pax said when they walked past the water nymphs doing a synchronized dance to impress some injured Romans.

                Kally touched her glasses, as though she wouldn’t be aware if they fell off. She glanced down. “I did—”

                Pax flicked her chin. “Yea, your jaw.”

                With the sun striking the mist on the horizon, he realized Axel was right about her hair. It looked like an extension of the rays. He could remind her that she was missing her little “high-five” dad session with the other Apollo campers, but he didn’t. Did he feel bad…?

                No.

                Until he remembered he was here for more than just a new potential home and possible fillet mignons. Once they circled back around to the cabins, he asked Matt if there was somewhere they could talk in private. The entire camp was awake now. The Hephaestus and Athena cabins had successfully dragged Silver Festus—as they were calling her—around Peleus, the copper guard dragon, and had dumped her outside their cabins. Many other camps were drifting by to gawk.

                Kally jumped. “Sun salutations! It is _way_ past 7:07!” She searched around for where she was supposed to be. Without meaning to, Matt had carefully avoided the Apollo cabin in their morning march.

                “Do they put people on arrow collection duty if you miss it?” she asked.

                “No, but they do put you on be-a-moving-target-duty,” Matt said. “I’d wait in Cabin Seven for when they get back. Remember: Apollo children love to be complimented. Will is no exception.” He pointed to the cabin glowing gold in the sunlight.

                Kally started to run, stopped, thanked Matt for the tour, fumbled awkwardly with how to say bye to Pax, and ran toward her cabin. She slowed down at the door, obviously unsure what to do. The poor thing knocked. When no one answered, she sat down on the front steps, blushing furiously and pointedly not looking over to them.

                “So…” Pax asked, “Is that a real duty? Moving-target-duty?”

                “Only if you anger Clarisse,” Matt informed him.

                At Camp Othrys, they’d called it dodging training. Pax was used to doing it at unannounced times. “Talking in private?” he reminded Matt.

                “Surprise first,” Matt said with a side grin. They walked towards a simple, old cabin. Paint peeled off the wooden boards. Someone had spray painted over the caduceus over the doorway. “I figure this is where you’ll be staying anyway. It’s the closest thing to the Spies and Sabotage unit you were in before.”

                Kronos' troops had been divided by ability as opposed to god heritage or ranking. Although heritage wasn’t a requirement, Pax was used to spending lots of time with Hermes and Aphrodite children because of his specialty. When he wasn’t with Axel or Alabaster. He hadn’t minded. All the ladies and gents there were either beautiful, could take a joke, or both. Though it did leave him with a permanent hatred of charm speakers.

                The two head counselors led Cabin Eleven back from breakfast. The Hermes children were pushing at each other. One looked particularly happy, particularly injured, and splattered with pink paint. Matt hailed down the counselors.

                “Hey Connor! Travis! Sup?”

                The two boys had curly brown hair and blue eyes. Both wore mischievous grins. Connor held up his hand, and the campers paused, snickering.

                As they walked over, Matt shoved Pax forward. “Ajax Pax, meet Cabin Eleven. He’s undetermined.”

                Connor laughed and patted Pax’s shoulder. “We haven’t had one of those in… well, a year.”

                “Though we did almost convince that little kid—Caroline?—that she was a child of Hermes,” Travis bragged. “Almost outsmarted a child of Athena.”

                “Yea, outsmarting a preteen is impressive,” Matt complimented.

                Travis patted Pax’s other shoulder. “You’ll probably be claimed before the night’s up, but you’re welcome to our cabin. It’s been way too empty without any undetermined.”

                Pax became very aware that Connor and Travis were debating on whether or not they could steal his utility belt. A smile wormed onto his face. He felt right at home. He was about to comment when his mouth fell open further than the entrance to a funhouse.

                Behind the brothers, whispering with another camper, a large Hispanic teen with dark hair and eyes stood. A ball popped in Pax’s stomach, one that he hadn’t felt in a long, long time: pure happiness.

                There was no controlling his movements. Without a thought, he twisted the Stoll brother’s hands off his shoulders. He ducted under them, rolled forward, and tackled into the camper.

                “Chris!” he cried.

                Chris crumbled under Pax’s tackle. He looked startled, then ecstatic, then he burrowed his face into Pax’s shoulder. “Ajax!”

                Upon realizing no one had actually been hurt, the Stoll brothers exchanged a glance. They inspected Matt for an uncomfortable moment. Then they motioned the rest of the campers inside, leaving Chris to hug Pax. Matt stepped away to go look at Silver Festus.

                Despite the Stoll brothers’ attempt to give them privacy, several elfish faces appeared at the windows to shamelessly watch them. Connor was among them.

                Pax didn’t care. He trembled with surprise and relief. “Chris! I thought you died in the Labyrinth!” Pax felt tears streaming down his cheeks.”We looked—Axel and I—when we heard, we looked for you, but—but we couldn’t find you and Axel assumed you were dead. After what happened to Mary—”

                “Don’t,” Chris shushed him. He pulled away from Pax, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “Don’t talk about that. Please.”

                “I—but—you’re alive. How?”

                “Clarisse found me. She and Dionysus—they helped me get my sanity back.” Chris leaned back into the grass. He’d regained him composure, though his voice still trembled at the topic. Meanwhile, Pax was sure he’d been crying enough to inflate his face to wrecking ball size. He didn’t care.

                “It’s been… really good since then. Clarisse and I are a thing…”

                “The Ares leader?” Pax asked. He smiled, happy Chris had found someone.

                “Yea, she makes a scarier godmother than leader, if you’d believe it.”

                Pax couldn’t imagine the kind of psycho it would take to pick a daughter of Ares as a godmother.

                Chris smiled back, but it weakened. His eyes unfocused. “With all the time he spent in the Labyrinth, I don’t know how Axel maintained what sanity he has.” Chris laughed as though he’d be beaten with a badger if he didn’t. Then his eyes widened. He rose to a crouch, leg muscles tense. “Axel’s not here, is he?”

                The joy in Pax’s stomach curtailed, like someone had given him a Reese’s Stick then set it on fire, just so he couldn’t eat it. “He’s waiting outside the barrier until I decide if I want to stay or not. Do you have a problem with that?” Rage cut his tears. He sat up, knowing he was far smaller than Chris, but also aware that he used to outrank him.

                Time at Camp Half-Blood made Chris forgetful. Either that, or Pax’s puffy, tear-streaked face wasn’t much more intimidating than a baby panda’s.[1] “He isn’t going to try to come across the barrier, is he? It wouldn’t be safe for him in here. He’s a—”

                “Don’t you _dare_ call my brother a monster,” Pax snarled.

                Chris frowned. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

                Silence pressed between them. A crunch erupted from the Hermes cabin.

                Both glanced up to find Travis chowing on popcorn in the window. At their gaze, he waved slowly before passing the popcorn to another cabin mate.

                Chris sighed. He reached over to touch Pax’s shoulder gently. “Hey.” Pax didn’t withdraw, but he did glare. “I’m glad you survived. I didn’t know if you died in the Battle of Mount Othrys or if the Romans had captured you after.”

                Pax wanted to look scary. He wished he had a cloak he could wave around and shout _Fear me!_ The rage subsided at the genuine relief on Chris’s face. Besides, dating a daughter of Ares was probably way scarier than anything he could muster. “You’re a hard guy to hate,” Pax muttered. “You should work on that. A bad character flaw.”

                The smile returned to Chris’s face. He relaxed. “So… if Axel is waiting to see if you like the camp… what are you two actually doing here?”

                “Huh?”

                Chris raised his eyebrows. “Ajax, you would _never_ permanently leave your brother’s side. And I don’t think he’d ever want to live _here_.” He waved a hand at the horseshoe of cabins. “So you two are up to something. You’re not…” Chris chewed on his lip. Pax could see how carefully he picked his words, trying to avoid inciting the prior anger. “…working for your mom are you? Or worse…”

                Pax innocently tilted his head to the side. He sighed, “To be honest Chris…” He stared out to where Matt poked around at the inanimate dragon with an Amazon-looking, dark skinned girl. “I’m here to have a fart contest with Matt.”

                “That’s—what?” Chris choked on a laugh. “I don’t believe you.”

                “Hey Matt!” Pax shouted. Matt nodded to the girl, then rushed over to join him.

                “Sup?”

                “I’m thinking beans and burritos for breakfast, how about you man?” Pax asked, grinning devilishly over to Chris.

                Chris faked a gag. “Eugh. I’m going to keep an eye on you until you tell me what’s going on, but—uh—at a healthy distance.”

                “At your own risk,” Pax said. He rose to his feet. “Once Matt is done giving me the tour, you wanna hang out? I’d love to hear about… well… everything.”

                “Definitely,” Chris said. He hesitated before going back into his cabin. “It really is good to see you alive. I didn’t know how many people survived.”

                Pax struggled not to cry again or give Chris another hug. He puffed up his cheeks and released the air. “I’m one of the few,” he finally managed along with smile. “Because Paxes are awesome.”

                They parted. Matt walked them to a cabin that matched Pax’s clothing in the steam punk Renaissance movement. There were smoke stacks peaking out of the metal roof. Pax wondered how difficult the lock on the circular door would be to pick. He and Chris would have to try it out sometime, though he was sure the Hephaestus children had learned to Hermes proof their cabin

                The inside was what Pax would have imagined for Hephaestus: high tech with lots of power tools. He was a little surprised and creeped out by the wheelchair in the corner with fake legs attached.

Matt walked up to a bunk folded into the wall, pressing some code into a digital pad. With a few noisy whirls and whistles, the bunk folded down, revealing bed sheets with the Viking football team logo, an alcove of comic books, and another digital panel. Pax’s fingers itched to find out what lay behind that one.

                Matt sat down. “Okay, you wanted to talk in private. My siblings have already gotten all their tools out of here and will be working on Silver Festus for the rest of the day—but that doesn’t mean you can touch their stuff,” he stated when Pax got a little too close to the digital panel of another folded bed. Matt rubbed his hand together. “What do you want?”

                “Pft, beans and burritos. Weren’t you eavesdropping on Chris and me?”

                Matt pressed a button on his panel. A miniature crossbow armed with suction arrows popped out of the wall and fired at him. Pax jerked to the side. “Hey!”

                Hunger really clenched Pax’s stomach. They hadn’t eaten since last night’s dinner. _The faster I get through this, the faster I can get a breakfast burrito,_ he thought.

                “I need to call in the two favors you owe Axel and I,” Pax stated. He wanted to tell Matt he’d have to parade around in a _My Little Pony_ costume, but he needed to keep focused.

Matt didn’t prompt him; his eyes narrowed, awaiting an order. _Haha! Yes! Fear me!_ Pax cackled internally.

                Then, Matt put up a hand, interrupting Pax’s triumph. “How did you know I was alive?” he asked, quietly.

                Their reunion had been quieter than that with Chris. Pax figured it would be hopeless to say, _“Hey, uh… not playing favorites or anything_ …” though he wasn’t.

                “I heard you were one of the technicians aboard the Princess Andromeda when she exploded,” Pax said. “You pull a Sherlock and fake your death?”

                Matt nodded. He looked down like he was unsure whether he should hang his head in shame or lift his chin in pride. “Percy Jackson saved _a lot_ of lives when he told the half-bloods on board to get off the ship. I started to realize we might be fighting for the wrong side.”

                Pax put up his hands. “Hey, no judgment here. Had I known they offered sweet flying pony rides, I might have switched sides too.” Or if he thought they’d take his brother. Or if a satyr had noticed him. Or if his mother had kindly directed them to this camp instead of Kronos’s. Really, if Luke had sneezed hard enough to overlook Pax knocking out his brother and dragging him to Camp Half-Blood, he’d have done it. Though Axel would have never forgiven him if he survived entry.

                “You didn’t look surprised when you saw me here,” Matt continued, “and now it sounds like you came here to ask me two favors—so you _knew_ I was alive _and_ here. How?”

                “I was the best intelligence gatherer in Kronos’s army…” Pax stated, examining his nails. “Also, your Youtube and Instagram profiles are still active. The #Herasucks gave me giggles.”

                Matt laughed, “I should have known you were still following it.”

                Pax made sure they dropped by a public library once a week to check if Matt was alive and occasionally catch up on the most recent episode of _Miraculous Ladybug_ _and Voltron._

                “Obviously they must know that Chris used to be a member. Do they know about you?” Pax asked. He probably should have been more careful with what he said when he was talking to Chris earlier, but he almost didn’t care anymore. Well, he didn’t care if the Greeks knew who _he_ was.

                A chuckle came to Matt’s lips. “The same way I know the tooth fairy doesn’t leave coins under our pillows whenever we accidentally blow out a tooth. They know, but none of us really talk about it…” Matt kicked his legs under his bunk. “You know Ajax… they’re cool here. I don’t know what you’re planning—”

                “Me? Planning?” Pax waved his hand. “That’s Axel’s job.”

                “That’s a bad lie,” Matt teased. “But really, they’ll accept you here. I know you don’t want to leave your brother, but—“

                “I need you to build me a transport that can get in and out of California fast,” Pax interrupted. All he wanted was to stay in this camp. They were safe, way safer than he’d be on the outside. They _cared_ about each other. That was obvious from the jovial interaction. Hades, they even attacked each other in a loving way. Plus, they seemed to have the potential to hate Romans and he could always get behind some good Roman hating.

                Matt’s jaw dropped. “You’re not going to _attack_ New Rome, are you?”

                Thoughtfully, Pax tapped his chin. “The plan always has room for adjustments if you really want us to. But I also need you to get me something. I’ve done a lot of research and I heard a certain Golden Net from Hephaestus’s wedding bed is in Bunker Nine.” He leaned against the wall, half hoping he didn’t hit a number pad and set off a trap, half hoping he did because he was sure whatever it would do would be awesome. Maybe little bronze soldiers would erupt from the floor and start _pew pewing_ at him.

                Matt clutched the railing on his bed, knuckles white. “How do you know about Bunker Nine?”

                “I didn’t know for sure until you made that face.” Pax grinned devilishly. This tactic worked a lot on unaware victims. “Lecture Time! Though the gods thought it best to keep the Greeks and Romans apart to avoid some good old Mortal Kombat… Demigod Kombat—whatever. The Titans didn’t mind telling their generals. Axel, Alabaster, and Luke talked about setting them against each other, but thought it easier and a better use of resources to set the gods against each other instead, hence stealing the Masterbolt.”

                “Which leads to Bunker Nine..?”

                Pax put up a hand. “Lemme finish my monologue—eh hem. So, the Titans still had some information about the last Civil War between Romans and Greeks. Bunker Nine was rumored to be built as a defense against Romans. It is also where Hephaestus is rumored to keep some important… house trophies.”

                “Wait—Ajax—” Matt shook his head. “I wouldn’t be able to build the type of transport you’re talking about without the help of my siblings—“

                “I can take care of that—” Pax did a quick calculation. Rachel should be kidnapped within the next day and needed to be rescued within 24 hours… “—in the next 48 hours. You just need to start the blue prints.”

                “ _A _nd__ ,” Matt glared, “no one has been in Bunker Nine since Leo died. No one else is a fire user. Our blow torches don’t get hot enough and we’re pretty sure Greek fire might blow up the entrance. So even if I agree to help you—”

                While Matt protested, Pax strolled over to the window. Although he wasn’t sure how to work the complicated levers for the shades, he took a guess. Instead of rolling up like he expected, the window shudders went transparent.

                As though the windows had opened, the sound of Matt’s siblings fawning over Silver Festus echoed into the metal room. Pax pointed a thumb at the dragon. “If you wire the fire port to work, do you think that thing would have enough firepower to get in?”

                Matt frowned in thought. “From what I heard, Festus couldn’t get in on his own…” he released his bed post and shuffled his hands together. “But if we could harness that fire into a glove like Leo’s hand…” He shook his head. “Wait—I can’t just steal the Silver Festus and drag it—”

                “You won’t have to!” Pax jumped in excitement. “Think about it. Would any of your siblings object to getting back into Bunker Nine?”

                The thought made Matt’s blue eyes gooey like Pax had shoved him a double decker bacon cheeseburger. Matt shook his head again, trying to clear it. Though he seemed enthusiastic, he tried to look firm. “If I’m going to do this for you, you need to promise me you’re not trying to hurt anyone or cause… well, chaos.”

                Carefully choosing each word, Pax responded slowly, “I solemnly vow, on the River Styx, that my end goal is to save lives if these requests are fulfilled.”

               Matt flopped back on his bed with a groan. “Augh, why do I even bother with the Silver Tongued Snake.”

                Pax grinned. One to-do item checked off on his mother’s list.

 

 

* * *

 

 

[1] Pandas are actually terrifying.


	12. Ajax: Reason Number One of Why You Should Eat Your Local Harpy

                Pax went to goof off after Matt left to tell his siblings about the Bunker Nine idea. By goofing off, he got bucked by a pegasis—apparently they didn’t like it when he made rodeo references—started a food fight with the Stoll brothers when they were supposed to be preparing lunch, and trampled some strawberries when he told Clarisse she “missed a spot, or the whole thing,” during her fight earlier with Reyna. The strawberries came in when Pax threw down a smoke bomb and ran from her into the fields, then frantically ran back when he remembered the Romans made camp there.

                Several Athena campers tried to examine his utility belt after that. He’d make comments like, “that would take the fun out of the surprise,” and—if they persisted to get too close—he’d pinch the nerve in their arm. The Hermes kids loved this, placing bets on who would get his belt first.

                He spent most of his time with Chris, though he did cross paths with the other new campers. He got to compliment Kally for not being put on target duty and—in fact—proving to be an excellent shot with a bow. She blushed in disbelief with every Bullseye. Will, though probably quite a bit younger than her, was happily taking the proud, older-brother role.

At lunch, Merry was claimed in a huge spectacle. She’d gone to sit with her brother, Pollux, then stopped and shoved her elbow into Mr. D. Mr. D sighed, lounged back, and flicked his wrist.

                A hologram grape vine erupted above her head in a purple blaze along with two hologram sparkling cider bottles that exploded violet glitter all over the dining pavilion. Satyrs tapped their hooves together and played their reed pipes in a joint song. Some shouted in alarm, as though this was against their will.

                The whole scene lasted a total of sixty glorious seconds. Mr. D sat back, looking bored through the whole thing. The others at the table, Pollux and Dakota, nearly choked on their drinks, they were laughing so hard.

                Everyone else was horrified. Percy stared in shock at Mr. D for the rest of lunch, like he was waiting for a finale of tap dancing velociraptors.

                Pax saw the Demeter sisters at the arena for a bit. One of the Romans teased Euna, asking if she and Joey needed to go plant some flowers. She promptly slammed her heal into the point of a sword on the ground. That and—Pax assumed—some fancy spring-loaded grass made the sword hilt flick up into her hand. Although her form was rigid—like she’d learned more in a classroom than in combat—she held her own well enough to shut up the Roman. Pax had to nod in appreciation, _feisty_.

                Each time Jason walked past, the data collector in him chattered:

_Jason Grace_

_Powers: manipulation of air, weather, and lighting. Expert sword fighter_

_Potential weaknesses: suicidal loyalty to legionaries, especially fifth cohort. Potential for kidnapping. Blindly honor-bound. Seems to get knocked unconscious a lot._

_New Edition: Piper McLean and Nico di Angelo_

                Really, his brain was on hyper drive for _all_ of them, like a scientist had dumped a teeny rat into the labyrinth of his brain and given it twenty Red Bulls. Not that it mattered anymore. His father’s whispers crawled along his ears like an annoying fly that phased out of existence when you went to swat it, _“Knowing your ally’s weaknesses can be more important than knowing your enemy’s.”_

Because he couldn’t get that part of his brain to shut up, meeting Rachel Elizabeth Dare was difficult.

                On the way to the evening sing along, Chris and he spotted her, a tiny cyclops and a red harpy walking with Percy and Annabeth. Some of the Hermes children were surprised Pax wasn’t scared of the cyclops, but he knew those were the Happy Meal toys of the Greek world.

                Chris had finished telling him that the cyclops, Tyson, and the harpy, Ella, were a couple. Chris admitted they were the prime example of opposites attracting as he wasn’t sure what they had in common.

                “They’ve clearly have lots in common: they both have mouths, and they have two eyes—” Pax inhaled sharply. “Oh wait, my bad.”

                A hand clamped on his shoulder. He was about to scream that he had nothing against cyclopes—in fact he loved monocles—when he saw _her_ behind him. He didn’t know when she’d walked over. From the look on Percy and Annabeth’s faces, she must have zombie strolled up to him.

                She was a cute redhead with paint staining her jeans and freckles staining her face. Pax couldn’t help but notice how her toes wiggled in the grass. Pax had to wonder how harshly Apollo would punish him if he flirted with his Oracle. After all, this was the twenty-first century. A chaste Oracle was so last century.

                Her eyes changed his mind. They were blank. Not _knock, knock, anyone-home-_ blank. More like a _rotting-condemned-sign_ -blank.

                Pax tried to peel her fingers off him. They were more solid than steel. He jammed her pressure point. Nothing happened.

                Panic shook him. His mother said the Oracle couldn’t give prophecies right now. Had she lied?

                Then awareness lit up Rachel’s green eyes. She stared at her hand. “Huh… at least I didn’t try to kill you.”

                That sounded like something he would say. “Does that happen often?” he squeaked.

                “To the last girl I blanked out on,” she explained. She released Pax’s duster jacket and flexed her fingers.

                Percy and Annabeth raced over with Tyson and Ella. “I didn’t hear a prophecy,” Annabeth said; the statement was a question.

                “Nope,” Pax stated. “No prophecies here! Just a guilty looking Hermes kid, right?” His heart thudded. Prophecies were bad news.

                Although Annabeth had a hand on Rachel’s forearm—maybe to stop her if the Oracle went for the neck next—suspicion narrowed her gaze at Pax. “You were claimed by Hermes?”

                “No, uh, I—j—just identify with them.”

                Rachel frowned. Her fingers shook. She rotated her hand, then slowly looked up at Pax. “I was supposed to give you a prophecy.”

                “ _Web of lies, kept by an oath_ ,” Ella agreed in Greek, fluttering her feathers, “ _Growth by death and death by growth_.”

                They stared at her. Pax wanted to swat the chicken off Tyson’s shoulder, but was too stunned.

                “Well,” Percy stated, “That sounded important.”

                “Ella smells a snake. Snakes are bad for harpies,” she continued with a shudder. “Java Script Snake. Use the arrows to play the game. Titanoboa: gargantuan, prehistoric.”

                “I’ll protect you from snakes,” Tyson assured her. “I’ll throw a bolder and they’ll go smash.”

                Pax liked the image of this cyclops throwing a bolder at him about as much as he liked that prophecy. Also, what was up with this harpy? Her nervous twitching made Pax nervous. “This is fun, creepy, and all, but uh—I’ve got a toy python to throw into the Apollo cabin. Maybe that’s what she’s talking about?” He took a step to the side.

                “Hold it.” Annabeth grabbed his arm. He was pretty sure those grey eyes could pierce through his T-shirt and name every one of his veins. “We need to talk to Chiron about this prophecy.”

                “Prophecy?” he asked, tiling his head to the side and giving her his best _I’m stupid_ smile.

                Fortunately, the activities director was distracted setting up some tournament for the next day in honor of the Roman. After Rachel confirmed this was _not_ something Ella quoted from the Sibylline Books before and Pax assured them he was clueless, Chiron told them they could talk about it after the games.

Most of the counselors helped set up. Calex could be seen darting by with messages. Pax felt queasy when he saw Reyna and Annabeth walk over the hill, to where Axel was fixing the van. No one had recognized either of them yet, but Reyna made him nervous and Annabeth was now _highly_ suspicious of him. He hoped Axel wouldn’t do something stupid.

                That felt backwards, being worried that _Axel_ would do something stupid.

                Before they picked up Kally, Axel had told Pax to take all three days to complete his task, but Pax didn’t want to get comfortable. After three days, he might be tempted to leave his brother. His brother needed him.

                That night, he curled up on his bedroll on the floor. Everyone was disturbed he hadn’t been claimed after the first day. Pax knew he wouldn’t be claimed; his mother only wanted him when he was useful. Or, she’d wait until the least convenient moment, like when he’d be hiding from Romans and a floating hologram would scream out, _Hey! Romans! He’s over here!_  

                He was happy to be in Cabin Eleven. There weren’t enough beds. Even though there were less people there with everyone else getting claimed, Hermes still had a lot of elfish troublemakers running around. Pax loved it. Carefully, he rolled up his utility belt, wrapped it in his duster and slept on it. He’d be sore in the morning, but at least no one could steal from him without waking him.

                Camp felt wrong when it was quiet. He could hear insects chirping outside, ones that only survived courtesy of the climate control. _Year round strawberries=year round mosquitoes!_ Shadows slithered along the wooden walls. Pax wondered if the Leonis Caput would murder him in his dream tonight or if Phobetor would give him a rest.

                “Haha—rest,” he muttered. “Hey Ax—“

                “Pax, shut up,” Chris mumbled sleepily from his bunk.

                Pax frowned.

                With the sentinels they’d posted to watch out for Axel and the visits from Chiron, Annabeth, and Reyna, Axel would be wired. He wondered if Axel would walk to the closest gas station to buy a packet of cigarettes. And Pax wouldn’t be around to throw them away or write a happy note on the container that said:

_I am flavored with urea, a chemical compound that is a major component of urine!_

                Without the climate control, Axel would also be cold. True, he could double up with Pax’s sleeping bag but—but Axel wouldn’t try to sleep anyway. Pax wanted to stand up, storm out to the van and yell at Axel to throw out his theoretical cigarettes, put on an ugly sweater, and go to sleep. Why was he so worried? Axel was the strong one, right? Way stronger than Pax.

                Then it hit him: this was the first night he’d spent without his brother since before he could remember, at least since the Battle of Manhattan. In Belize, his five siblings and grandparents lived in a single room shack. When Uncle Frasco promised to show them the world, they slept in the _Tumbling Six_ trailer with Frasco’s fantastic stories about mythology ringing in their ears. When they fought in the Titan War, they shared the same tent.

                Still, Pax had never felt this… safe.

                He wanted Axel to feel it too.

                Three days would be way too long at this camp.

_Phobetor…_ Pax silently prayed, _if you’re listening, and not too busy crushing people’s hopes and ripping out their dream organs, could you scare me awake before anyone else in camp wakes up? It’ll really help to speed things up a bit._

                No response. Pax sighed. He was really hitting a low if he was praying to the God of Nightmares for help. He clutched his jacket. Two more apples formed in one of his pockets, ready for tomorrow’s use. If everything went well, Axel and he would be on their way to their first quest. If it went poorly, Percy Jackson would kill him before the Romans could get the chance.

                Pax stared at the wall. Tomorrow he’d have to swallow any regrets with a bite of his golden apple.

 

 

 


	13. Kalypso: Now That is a Hot Apple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kally is just starting to get comfortable at camp: waking up at ungodly hours to do sun salutations and playing music all night long. Of course, that’s when the cabins almost start a war with each other.

 

 

                The constant music was the best part about Cabin Seven. None of Apollo’s children could stand silence. Or—to Kally’s delight—darkness.

                Music sheets and instruments were everywhere. At first glance, Kally didn’t notice the beds. There was too much else in the room. The windows followed the progression of the sun. The largest faced East with shear, golden curtains that matched the glistening exterior. A skylight stretched across the roof and led to the Western windows. Mirrors—both for self reflection and light reflection—hung off the walls, crisscrossed with targets containing every kind of projectile easily kept in a small space: darts, blow-darts, knives, and miniature catapulted monkeys. Frisbees and basketballs littered one wall. Trashcans were at every corner, over spilling with crumbled music sheets and story drafts. Tiny basketball hoops lined each of them.

                The exposed wall space was white with some kind of an erasable surface. Expo markers were scattered on the ground so campers could walk up and add an idea to story arches scribbled there or write musical notes on some permanent musical bars.

                When Kally saw all the discarded piles of story ideas, she clutched the notebook in her bag in excitement. They were _writers_. Of course they were writers. _The Odyssey, the Iliad, Works and Days_ : they were all epic poems! Apollo was a poetry god, right?

                A table at the back had various instruments organized on and leaning against it. Some Kally immediately recognized, others—Will later explained—were keras, cratalum, cithara and a chelys. Basically a horn, clappers and two different types of lyres. Next to the instruments was a bookshelf with beat up books and scrolls.

                Kally went through to read the authors, expecting these to be copies of Homer’s and Hesiod’s epic poems or something else she’d read in English class. “Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Epicurus, Zeno… these are all—l”

                “Philosophers. Yea, dad’s also the God of Reason according to some myths. Such a jack-of-all trades! A lot of those philosophy dudes didn’t necessarily believe in him, but they certainly got inspiration from him,” one of Kally’s supposed siblings, Kayla , explained. “Quoting that stuff is simultaneously the best way to impress and infuriate the Athena campers. Malcolm and I have gone on two dates arguing over these books.”

                “Did he know they were dates?” Austin, another sibling, teased.

                She scoffed and tossed her hair. “He’s a child of Athena. He’s not stupid.”

                This all happened when Kally first got in. She’d sat on the porch, too embarrassed and miserable to ask Pax and Matt for more help and too embarrassed and miserable about missing sun salutations to seek out the Apollo campers. So, she did the logical thing. She moped.

                When Will led everyone back, his friendliness was less merciful than the _be-a-target_ duty would have been. There weren’t as many children as—say—Aphrodite’s cabin, but they were loud, boisterous and flashy. From a glance, Kally could tell they had the muscles of star athletes, the faces of California beach models and… well, really California beach models fit everything.

                They were terrifying. None of them would let Kally hide or keep to herself to comprehend the new surroundings. She got a lot of cheerful, “You don’t need to be afraid of me, speak up!” and “you can’t keep your eyes down when you have such pretty ones!” Each one wanted to show her something or explain how an instrument worked. If being an extrovert could be used as a form of torture, there should an Apollo child in every interrogation room.

                All of them were shocked she’d never played an instrument before. The thought of picking up one in front of these—she assumed—experts horrified her. It was like a zoo keeper assuring her there was _nothing_ to taking care of the crocodiles, _“just walk into the cage and you’ll be a natural.”_

                After the third type of instrument was offered—she didn’t even want to play a kazoo—she thought she might cry; she’d lost the ability to reject with dignity. Will shooed the others off.

“You don’t need to feel ashamed about playing in front of us. No one is expecting you to be perfect on the first try.” He assured. “We need to get you set up with a bed for now, but you and I are going to have a private music lesson later.”

                Kally wondered if Apollo was also the god of mindreading. She knew they _were_ expecting her to be perfect with her heritage—though maybe playing a few shrieking notes would disprove them. Well… once they finished bashing their heads in to stop the noise. She wondered if anyone had ever been chased out of the Apollo cabin for being a bad musician.

                Although she didn’t mean to completely disregard his comment, she noticed a perplexity that took her mind off the prior agitation. “Where are the beds?”

                There was a couch-bed thing as an audience chair by the instruments, but she didn’t see any bed banisters or bunks.

                Will walked to a closet beside the bathroom and opened the door. Inside were stacks of… folded futons and blankets?

                “Dad wasn’t just obsessed with haikus when he came back from Japan,” Will explained. Most of the futons and blankets were warmly colored with bold black strikes making designs on the material. They reminded her of Grecian vases. Or a Halloween store. “Japanese floor futons give us more space for everything. You can design your own pattern for yours. We have a deal with the Athena cabin: we fletch them specialty arrows and they’ll weave us fancy futon covers.”

                That sounded like a standard exchange in mythology.

When Kally received a designated floor space, she calmed down. At home, she’d had to share a room with her older sister, so sharing was nothing new. Her alleged half-siblings became easier to deal with one on one. Austin showed her an experiment on the wall: he was assigning each letter of the alphabet a musical note to make a secret code they could use during war. Kally didn’t know how practical it would be to play songs back and forth during a battle—mixing up “charger” and “bunny” might be a problem—but the idea was cool. Kayla had a bundle of scrying crystals and new age books. She bought them after Rachel lost contact with the Delphic oracle, with the hopes she could get some prophecies.

                The rest of the day went incredibly well. After the initial shock, Kally felt at home with Cabin Seven. Their tumultuous energy and suicidal confidence reminded her of her brothers in Virginia. To her shock, she ended up being an excellent shot with a bow. Apparently the camp’s weekend scheduling was looser, so the Apollo campers took it on themselves to parade her around. She started to wonder if they made everything a spectacle.

                Other than when Pax complimented Kally’s archery skills or when Merry was claimed at lunch, Kally didn’t get to see either of them much. She guessed their siblings—or in Pax’s case, babysitters—kept them busy. She hadn’t heard of Pax getting claimed yet, but he fit in quite well with the Hermes children that were showing him around.

                The best part of everything: that night, she didn’t have nightmares.

                Cabin Seven had little sun-shaped nightlights along the wall. Between that and the moonlight that filtered through the skylight, they constantly had a comfortable glow. She didn’t know if it was that, or if Nico and Clovis had wrestled back the night monsters for another night, but she slept more soundly than if she’d survived a triathlon with a sumo wrestler strapped to her back.

                Had she known she wouldn’t get to enjoy her uncolored futon the next night, she might have whined when they woke her for sun salutations.

 

* * *

 

                On the way back from sun salutations, Cabin Seven heard arguing.

                One of the Romans from the fifth cohort—a child of Apollo who received permission from Reyna and Will to join Cabin Seven for sun salutations—looked panicked when all of them turned to him. He shrugged nervously, showing he hadn’t heard of another planned sneak attack the Greeks. If it wasn’t the Romans causing an argument…

                From what Kally understood, the only other campers awake as early as Cabin Seven’s were Athena’s children. Based on what little she knew about them, she couldn’t imagine what they’d be arguing about at this hour.

                When they returned to the horseshoe of cabins, most of the campers were out because of the ruckus. A fight had broken out between the counselors of Cabin Four and Cabin Twenty. Several Demeter children dragged their counselor, Miranda, off of the counselor of Hecate. Kally adjusted her glasses to make sure she was seeing correctly. Lou Ellen appeared to have plucked off Miranda’s ear.

                “We _deserve_ it Miranda!” Lou Ellen shouted. “ _We_ were the ones who captured the flag on Friday!”

                “Only because Connor and Travis set it up for you!” Miranda snarled back. “Besides, look at what it says. It’s like you can’t read!”

                Kally didn’t know what “it” was until she glanced where most of the campers congregated. In the middle of the horseshoe, in front of the blazing fire pit, there was a golden apple statue the size of a hotdog cart. Her prior oversight had her worried she might have a cataract. It was an apple with the inscription:

_To the Worthiest Cabin_

                Though she couldn’t explain it, she wanted that apple more than a double cheeseburger after a ten mile hike. Everyone else seemed to feel the same. Several other cabins started to argue with each other. One of the Hermes children sounded appalled that a Hephaestus camper accused them of wanting to steal it.

                From all the chaos, Pax emerged at Kally’s side. She didn’t see where he came from. With all the bickering, it would have been hard to tell. He looked so pale and his eyes were so sunken, a fly could probably fill them with water and use them for a bath. With the back of a hand, he tried to rub the sleepiness and grumpiness out of one eye but just succeeded in looking like a cat about to fall over. He wore boxers with little pegasi on them and a black T-shirt with a yellow Pokémon labeled:

_Hypnos’s Japanese Form_

                Kally blushed. “Pax, uh, did you just wake up?” She immediately felt stupid for asking.

                Without his duster or bronze breastplate, Pax looked so small. It was hard to believe he and Axel were brothers, albeit half. “I slept about as well as a Steeler would in Raven’s territory,” he explained. “What’s happening?”

                Kally didn’t know what birds or theft had to do with this, but that was as good a guess as any. She gestured over at the apple and had to fight a desperate hunger that it was supposed to be _hers_. She was relieved he had also overlooked the golden fruit at first; it made her feel a little less blind.

                “No, I see the apple,” he stated, crushing her thought. How he saw it was a wonder. Either he was so tired that his ADHD was neutralized, or he’d noticed a highly evolved civilization of ants on the ground: Pax wouldn’t look up. “I didn’t know what was happening,” he continued, like his new floor obsession needed no note.

                No _Planet of the Ants_ from what Kally could see. She started to glance back to the apple, wondering if Miranda had gotten her ear back, when Pax grabbed her hand. “Don’t—uh—that thing is so shiny it probably causes epilepsy.”

                “It does have a strong allure charm,” someone said beside her.

                Kally almost screamed. When she saw who it was, the sentiment stayed. She tore her hand from Pax.

                Nico scowled at the apple, like he could decay it the same way he withered her dream grass. Sadly, the apple didn’t explode. His arms were folded over his Mythomagic shirt and his black hair pinched up at odd angles, which made Kally’s heart flutter at the nerdy, bedhead look. He didn’t seem to notice her or Pax, other than confirming Pax’s comment. He was too focused on Kally’s counselor.

                Will clutched his fist as he looked at the golden statue. His gaze was steady, but—unlike the greedy irritation it inspired in the other campers—he seemed sad. He glanced past the apple to where Clarisse calmly nodded back at him.

                “We don’t need it,” Will stated, like he was looking at the next generation of _awesome_ in counsel gaming and denying its existence. More convincingly, he snapped, “We. Don’t. Need. It.” And shook his head. Every time he glanced at it, he seemed to need to reaffirm. Nico watched him struggle silently, staying just behind Will’s line of sight.

                “But Will!” Austin protested. “Look at it! It’s gold! And it’s an apple!”

                “If they make a match for it, we’ll try, but this is—this is going to start a real fight— _again_ over something stupid—” Though Kally had only known him for a day, she could tell Will was agitated and less sure of himself than he normally was.

                “We need to get that thing out of here before Clarisse loses control of her siblings,” Nico said.

                Will jumped. His lips followed the movement, curling upward in pleasant surprise. “Nico!”

                The son of Hades went to put his hands in his pockets, realized his pajamas didn’t have pockets, and crossed his arms instead, scowling. Although Kally thought he always looked cool and aloof, she got the distinct feeling he was _trying_ to look cool and aloof. He succeeded of course. “Annabeth went to get Chiron to check it out. That fruit has some nasty magic. Every time you look at it, the want for it grows stronger.”

                Kind of how Kally felt about him, but figured that was the last thing she should say at that moment. His comment made sense. She’d only looked at it twice and the longing was awful. Fortunately, Pax hadn’t let her look a third time.

                “I can feel it,” Will agreed. “Any idea where it—”

                “Will, I _literally_ just said not to look at it. Focus on me or something,” Nico snapped when Will started to glance back over.

                Despite the increasing tension and violence cultivating around them, Will’s grin broadened. “I’ve been waiting for you to say that.”

                Nico went bright red. He balled his fists and pushed them down, like he was trying to bury them deeper into a jacket he wasn’t wearing. “I didn’t mean—shut up Solace!”

                Pax’s determination to stare at the ground cracked. Though Kally was confused, he observed the interaction with a hint of smug understanding.

                Most of the other campers were unable to look away from the apple by now, but Will glanced about to make sure no one was paying attention to their conversation. Kally lowered her gaze when he looked at her. Once done, he considered something for a moment, shrugged, leaned closer to Nico and whispered, “That’s a nice bracelet you decided to put on.”

                The gold band glistened oddly against Nico’s black pajamas. Kally suddenly realized she didn’t remember him wearing it when she ran into Nico at the Big House. Just in her dream. Did he only wear it at night? Whatever it was made him embarrassed; he couldn’t get much redder in the face.

                “You choosing to wear it in public…” Will continued, “Does that mean the person who gave it to you and you are _finally…”_ With each adverb, Will’s lips sunk closer to Nico’s ear. _“Officially_ dating?”

                Nico jerked backwards, eyes wide, mouth unsure if it wanted to gape in awe or scowl in fury. “Now!? You’re bringing this up now?!”

                Some part of Kally’s mind, that was a little faster on the uptake, picked up a metaphorical sword and committed seppuku. The part of her mind that was in denial—a much more active part—told her eavesdropping was rude.

                “HEY!” Someone shouted loud enough to quiet the crowd. Kally, Will, Nico, and Pax all looked back to the center at the exclamation. Campers parted to allow Annabeth Chase and Chiron in front of the apple. Even with her hair in disarray and her face groggy, she looked ready to command an army against the scariest of giants.

                “Chiron!” One of the Aphrodite children cried in glee. Her hair was also rustled, but from a fight with a child of Hebe. “He’ll clear this up. He’ll give it to the _worthiest_ cabin.”

                “As if it would go to your cabin Drew!” someone shouted back.

                “Shut it,” Annabeth snapped. Everyone went silent again, shifting uncomfortably.

                A sleep mask stuck up on Chiron’s forehead and straw dangled out of his tail. He wore a Party Pony shirt depicting a pink pony and cupcakes. Kally heard something about Chiron’s room being in the Big House. If he couldn’t get into his bedroom without his wheelchair, she wondered if he’d been sleeping in the stables. Was it wrong of her to assume a centaur would be more comfortable in the stables? Was he doomed to be perpetually half comfortable no matter where he slept or could he have a comfortable compromise with a straw mattress in his bedroom?

                “Where did this apple come from?” Chiron asked.

                Kally blinked. All she’d been thinking about was how pretty the apple was, and—now—her subconscious was thinking about how best to beg Will not to use her head for target practice once he found out she kissed his soon-to-be-boy friend. Not about how the apple could have gotten there. Judging from the size, that thing must have been heavy, especially if it was actually made from gold.

                “It’s a gift from the gods!” someone shouted.

                Chiron frowned. His sleep mask slipped to hang around his neck. He seemed to think “gift” was too friendly a word. With each moment he thought, the campers became more rowdy. Miranda snarled about wanting her ear back. That was a request Kally hoped she’d never hear again.

                “Who cares where it came from?!” an Ares camper shouted.

                Everyone started to yell again. Campers pushed forward. Flowers shot up around Lou Ellen’s feet. She fell and Miranda charged the counselor of Hecate to retrieve her ear.

                “Chiron, just decide who gets it!”

                “Yea! Who is the worthiest cabin?”

                Chiron and Annabeth shouted for order, but fights broke out everywhere. The children of Nike screamed a battle cry and charged the center. Clarisse lost control of her siblings. The few that weren’t injured crashed into several children of Hephaestus. A nasty game of plants vs. magic erupted between Miranda’s and Lou Ellen’s cabins.

Fortunately, Cabin Seven was far enough away from the chaos that Kally could see everything that happened next.

                A red blur spurred through the mess, dodging fists and twisting through angry campers. The streak passed so fast, Kally didn’t realize what it was.

                Thunder rumbled.

                _Pop!_

                Light exploded in the center of the fight. Kally felt PTSD from the flashbang Pax used to fight the empousa, but this flash bang was on Death Star level. Sound became hollowed and muffled. Spots blurred out her vision.

                Then the water hit.

                Not rain. It felt more like Zeus took a bath and uncorked the bath tub above their heads. The two seconds of hyper pressurized water slammed Kally to her knees, leaving her temporarily deaf, blind, and immobile. In horror, she wondered if this is what happened when you angered the Greek gods. Maybe they just decided it would be easier to have more children then sort out this mess.

                Once the ringing in her ears quieted, she could hear a yell.

                “ _Enough!_ ”

                The shout came from two harmonized voices, both male and furious.

                As the dots in her vision cleared and she rubbed the water off her glasses, she could see the apple was obliterated. Like a god had put out a bus-sized cigarette there, all that was left was a black crater. Only two people were standing: the blond counselor of Zeus’s cabin and the black haired counselor of Poseidon, Jason Grace and Percy Jackson. An agitated harpy flitted on Percy’s shoulder, picking at her feathers and nervously chattering.

                “This was a set up,” Jason shouted like he was scolding troops. “The Oracle of Delphi has been kidnapped.”

                Most of the campers were still regaining their awareness. Those that heard him did double takes. Mutters rumbled in the group. Several Aphrodite children apologized for cursing people with bad hair days.

                Chiron, not spared from the disorienting light and water show, stumbled to his hooves. His eyes were wide. “By whom? How?”

                Percy gently plucked a note from the harpy’s mouth. He trembled in anger and—Kally guessed—worry. “According to this: Octavian.”

 

 

* * *

 

                Once she made her way to Percy and Jason, Reyna checked the handwriting. She said it was a match.

The Romans showed up in time to be blinded by Jason’s lightning bolt and be dowsed by Percy’s water hose. According to them, all the shouting and the rowdiness—it would have covered a kidnapping even if Rachel had screamed for help.

                Shame kept anyone from fighting further. Most of the campers were mad this was over an apple. “I mean come on,” Austin snorted once he could stand, “we were fighting over a piece of golden fruit? Gods.” Miranda and her cabin set to weeding out the plants they’d quick-grown to attack the children of Hecate.

                Apparently, Ella _saw_ a sickly, blond headed boy come after Rachel before… something happened that knocked her out.

                From the chatter Kally picked up from Nico and Will, Octavian was a dead man. Not that he was going to be dead—he was literally already dead. Nico confirmed that Octavian had definitely died at the end of the Giant War. When Nico suggested going to the Underworld to check—since, you know, children of Hades can make house calls—both Will and Reyna came down on him.

                “You can’t help me out in the infirmary if you’re a shadow puppet, other than entertaining the wounded,” Will stated, folding his arms.

                Whatever that was about, it was an old point of tension. Nico pouted and muttered that he’d be fine.

                Kally heard all of this by strategically being too stunned to move. Many of the campers had scattered, when the camp counselors decided to congregate around Nico to ask him about Octavian. Now, Chiron, Annabeth, Percy, Jason, Piper, Nico, Will and Reyna clustered nearby. She would have left when Kayla led the others from Cabin Seven to breakfast, but Pax took one step and collapsed.

                “My ankle!” he yelped and grabbed it. “Hades curse it!”

                Nico shot him a threatening look.

                Pax ignored him. He clutched at the limb, biting his lip. “Kally,” he frowned in the most pathetic pout she’d seen since a Sarah McLachlan commercial. “Can you sing to my ankle?”

                The question gave her an overwhelming impulse to hit him. He seemed to think this was the equivalent of the magical, “kiss it and make it better.” Although she’d seen her siblings sing over the wounded a few times, she didn’t have an innate knowledge of lyrical healing. “I might break it,” she said, kneeling beside him. “Wait—“ She scowled. “You can execute acrobatic maneuvers across the dashboard of a moving car, but you twist your ankle on an even surface?”

                Pax winked his yellow eye at her. “I was listening too hard to pay attention,” he explained, then tilted his head toward the counselors near them.

                “—on a quest,” Percy was saying.

                “I assume there is no vote to decide who goes?” the praetor asked. Despite being soaked, she looked dignified. Kally had to wonder if Reyna slept in her armor or if she could put it on as easily as sweatpants and a shirt. The only part that looked remotely out of place was her hair: instead of a utilitarian braid, it flowed over her shoulders in soft waves. Kally realized how elegant she was, like a statue embodying courage or maybe how the _Winged Victory_ might look with a head. That was a foreboding thought.

                “Normally, the Oracle of Delphi picks the leader of the quest,” Annabeth explained. “She would tell them their prophecy but now…”

                Apparently, that was the cue Pax awaited. He hopped to his feet, nearly kicking Kally in the process. She yelped. Next time he actually needed healing, she decide, she wasn’t going to oblige unless Pax was strapped down.

                “Kally, Axel, and I will go!” he offered.

                All of the counselors, the centaur and the praetor turned to them. Kally gulped, thinking, instead, maybe she shouldn’t ever heal Pax if he ever actually got hurt around her.

 


	14. Ajax: The World Would be a Better Place if the Gods had Sex Ed or Morals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pax thinks this is the chance he's been waiting for to get a quest and gain the trust of the Greeks. Plus, he'll get to rescue a super hot Oracle. Unfortunately, Apollo has other plans...

 

 

                Pax expected everyone to look skeptical, but Pax was an expert at winning arguments by out-talking people. He knew how to handle this. Pax put on his most charming smile and spread his hands in front of him. “Rachel was supposed to give me a prophecy, remember? Maybe she couldn’t because the events that triggered it hadn’t happened yet.”

                They weren’t expecting him to suggest sending—as far as they knew—a completely new, untrained, unclaimed, and cowardly demigod into battle. He resisted the urge to say, “ _It’s perfect! The enemy will never see it coming!_ ”

                Kally released a meek noise of protest. As he suspected, she was too shy and surprised to say anything else.

                “ _Web of lies kept by an oath_ …” Jason recited. He folded his arms. “That sounds more like a warning than a quest.”

                “Yea,” Pax agreed. He could have pointed out that likely wasn’t the full prophecy. Prophecies tended to run a little longer than a clever couplet as this Roman-gone-Greek should have known. He could have also pointed out that “ _web of lies”_ would normally refer to an unknown enemy… but he would rather see if anyone else wanted to call out Jason for being a paranoid jerk.

                Nope. No one wants to point that out about the 50 cent Captain America Boy Scout. After the destruction of Mount Othrys, Pax had learned to hate the former praetor. Just because Jason was now Greek and Pax now wanted to befriend the Greeks—that didn’t mean he would cut Jason, or any of Jason’s fan girls, any mental slack.[1]

                Though Pax thought Chiron would protest further, the centaur looked like he was considering Pax , Axel, and Kally as candidates. Annabeth decided to be a decent human being—er—half-blood and admitted, “We can’t send anyone out until we know where Rachel is. The note only said Octavian has her, not where he took her. Plus, we don’t know how he got into camp.”

                Percy scowled. “I thought he was pretty much mortal and pretty much dead. The barriers aren’t supposed to let unwanted mortals in, assuming that jerk is alive. ”

                “Howe Cavern,” the words slipped from Pax’s mouth before he could stop them. Instructions on the note would have been great—or maybe a second note from Octavian—but he was already talking.

                Everyone stared at him. “What?” Annabeth asked.

                “My dream yesterday—in the Big House—when we all fell asleep—Phobetor told me she’d be in Howe Cavern, well, it was a boar in a bowtie, but it was Phobetor.”

                “Who is Phobetor?” Percy asked.

                Well, Pax knew who would be plagued with nightmares tonight.

                “God of Nightmares,” Nico answered. His scowled at Pax, like Pax had stomped on his Goth Teddy Bear. “That’s who Clovis and I suspected. Phobetor _told_ you she would be kidnapped? And you didn’t think that or his presence pertinent information? Why didn’t you tell us?”

                _Because of the information was_ ** _boaring_**.

                He barely resisted that response. “I didn’t know who Phobetor was until later.”

This was true: he did not find out who Phobetor was until later in the dream. He continued, “I hadn’t met Rachel until yesterday where she _attacked me_ so I was at a disadvantage of putting two and two together.”

This was also not a lie. He was at a disadvantage for putting two and two together, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t. “And boars with bowties scare me,” he said. The boar did startle him. Boars should not wear bowties.

                “Besides,” Pax finished, “I didn’t know why Phobetor said she’d have to be rescued within 24 hours of her disappearance. She wasn’t even at camp when he said that.”

                Pax tried to ignore the way Percy glowered at him, like Pax had suggested hunting baby seals in Percy’s favorite aquarium. The Son of the Sea Dude exchanged a glance with Jason and Annabeth.

                “Twenty-four hours?” Annabeth asked. “Those caverns are about four hours away.” She considered Pax. “Any other information in this dream in this dream that you now _realize_ may be important?”

                Pax shrugged. “He pretty much directly told me to go get her. Also, conscilepsy is a serious disease that should not be taken lightly.”

                Apparently the universe didn’t like that answer, because a meteor catapulted from the sky towards them.

                No joke.

                Pax shrieked when he saw it coming. He grabbed Kally and slammed her behind Jason—assuming the son of Zeus would make the best defense against something falling from the sky. Everyone else averted their gaze as well, though they didn’t seem to be experiencing his mortal terror. At least Percy and Annabeth weren’t. The Demeter children appropriately prepared for their impending doom by screaming and running in circles.

                No explosion, no crash, no, “I’m sorry Kally. You never got to date my brother; I know he’s beautiful.”

Intense warmth engulfed him momentarily before melting away to the prior morning chill.

                All that was left where the meteor should have crashed was a red Ferrari LaFerrari with a dented front bumper. The car steamed and glowed with heat. The grass by the tires was scorched. A statue of Zeus lay in several pieces by the front bumper. Other than that statue and the grass, the car managed to avoid colliding with anything in the cabins’ courtyard.

                The driver’s door opened skyward, like a bird stretching an injured wing. With an entrance like that, Pax expected the driver to snap his fingers and have a hoard of beautiful women carry him out. Instead, the driver stumbled to the ground, righted, and ran to the Zeus statue.

                He was teenager, maybe close to Axel’s age, with blond hair, blue eyes and a perfect tan. He wore flipflops, torn jeans, and a black shirt. Normally, he might have been handsome, but his face was so warped with exhaustion, fear, and panic, he looked more like a senior who was told he’d have to retake all his final exams right after he finished them.

                “Oh great,” Percy grumbled.

                “No! No! No!” the driver gathered up the pieces of marble like they were as light as puzzle pieces. Those blue eyes flicked about frantically, landing on a Hephaestus camper that gawked on the cabin’s porch.

                “You—child of Hephaestus—make this even better than it was before so—uh—Zeus knows I meant it as a gift—or—a tribute to his glory—or—” While he spoke, he tossed the marble pieces overhand. The camper screamed and ran back into the cabin. The small storm of rock crushed the porch and dented the metal paneling along the walls.

                Once done, he frantically turned to the group. Most of them stood gawking.

                Reyna and Jason dropped their knees.

                “Lord Apollo,” Reyna greeted.

                Chiron followed their lead as best he could with his horse hooves. “Welcome, Lord Apollo,” he said.

                Several campers joined in on the groveling, though most stood there stunned. Excited chatter broke out amongst the members of Cabin Seven. Annabeth and Percy looked mildly annoyed.

                If this is how the gods normally acted, Pax felt a little more validated in having sided with the Titans.

                Seeing the proper attention, Apollo straightened and managed a dashing smile.

                The front bumper of his car fell off. Though Pax knew that physics got screwy when gods entered the picture, he had to wonder if part of the sun just disintegrated when part of the sun chariot broke, or if—once Apollo left—the bumper would just explode in a fiery blast. Either way, a tiny piece of Pax died seeing that car break.

                “What’s up guys?” Apollo asked like he hadn’t thrown Zeus’ boulders at one of the cabins. He brushed the hair out of his face and winked at Reyna when she glanced up.

                Neither she nor Jason knew how to react. Uncertainly, Jason rose to his feet, followed shortly by Reyna and Chiron. The Demeter children had stopped their panic and now stood to gape. Several Hephaestus children glared at Apollo while his back was turned.

Will stared. Though Pax couldn’t be sure from his position on the ground, the counselor seemed to be trembling.

                Kally shoved Pax off. When he’d knocked her behind Jason, he’d covered her as much as he could. This started as a heroic, vain-save-her-from-the-meteor and changed into a “sorry I almost broke your ribcage” moment. With the presence of Apollo, she didn’t notice. “That can’t be him,” she muttered as she got to her feet.

                “Hey kid,” Apollo paused in front of Will to ruffle his hair. “Nice sun salutations this morning. Wait—I feel a haiku…” he cleared his throat:

                “ _So, naturally,_

_My children are beautiful_

_Because I am cool_.”

                At the end, he paused.

                Chiron clapped politely. Pax realized something horrible with Apollo’s display: this person didn’t just inspire great works like Shakespeare and Poe, but also inspired writing like Twilight. Between that and how Apollo didn’t acknowledge Kally, Pax kinda wanted to see if his hand would catch fire if he punched the sun god’s face.

                “Normally I would really want to give you an encore haiku…” Apollo paused again like he wanted someone to agree. When no one did, he continued unhindered, “but Zeus and I are having a father-son spat so I can’t stay long if I want to stay a god. So! Uh—who are the most powerful here—you, you, and you—” Apollo pointed at Percy, then Jason, then Nico. “You three can make this story-worthy enough that I can impress dad, right?”

                Percy and Jason exchanged a glance. Nico’s mouth twitched. “Lord Apollo, not to jump to conclusions, but did you kidnap your own oracle to make your dad feel bad for you?”

                “No!” Apollo wailed. His calm, cool demeanor broke. He rushed up to Nico, grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Do you think that would work though?! He’s heartless with everyone but my sister!”

Nico tried to shove him off. Apollo didn’t notice. Everywhere but under Apollo’s grip, Nico’s body shimmered into and out of blackness. Pax had heard of that—shadow travel. Nico couldn’t manage it under the blazing snarl. Apollo looked like he was _hurting_ him. “Oh! This is why I’d make a better ruler than him an—“

                “Dad!” Will grabbed Apollo’s arm.

                “Lord Apollo!” Reyna cried.

                “Dude!” Percy shouted and went to tear the sun god off Nico.

                Things Pax didn’t need to see in his life: godly temper tantrum. Check.

                Apollo released Nico. The son of Hades was unharmed, but— _haha_ , Pax thought—shaken. Will protectively wrapped an arm around his shoulder and stepped back—or tried to. The first time Will went to touch Nico, his hand went through Nico’s body.

                Like before, Apollo appeared to neither notice nor care. “It’s not like I can appoint a new oracle if this one dies. Dad still thinks I hastened the Prophecy of Seven by installing this one! Besides, what if—after I valiantly defeat Python in a blaze of handsome glory—a new oracle recites the _next_ prophecy.”

                Pax wondered how Apollo would react to being pranked on a reality TV show. He hoped Hermes would do it and broadcast it for the world to see.

                A sinking hit Pax’s stomach. Apollo seemed pretty set on some classic acts of heroism from the big three half-bloods who—according to the mythology behind their parenthood—ought to hate each other. With Apollo’s current mood and determination, it wouldn’t even matter what Pax said about needing this quest.             

                “Okay, so—I need to give you three a prophecy for this more extreme than an Avenger’s script—”

                Percy was checking to make sure Will and Jason could get a _physical hold_ on Nico, but turned in fury at those words. “Whoa—attacking Nico—not okay! You can’t —”

                “You’re going to send me on the quest.”

Out of all the people who beat Pax to another interruption, he didn’t expect _her_. All of them turned towards Apollo’s car, where the verdict came from.

                Leaning against the Ferrari’s hood, Joey Song smiled at Apollo. Her arms were folded across her Camp Half-Blood shirt, still tied at her waist. As at the Big House, her makeup was in perfect condition despite likely having just woken up. Pax often wondered if these kinds of girls secretly were aliens that had detachable flesh faces they took off at night and put back on in the morning. The thought made them a lot less attractive and into much better Phobetor material.

                If that was Pax’s car and he were a god, fallen bumper or not, he’d have thrown a house at her for touching that vehicle Or a continent. He’d move the car first, of course.

                “Excuse me sweetheart,” Apollo said. From the way his eyes paused on Joey, he liked the new addition. Then the pause became a moment too uncomfortable. The intensity of his gaze was soul searching—Pax jumped. Apollo was the god of prophecy. Did he know stuff before it happened, like when someone would betray someone? But then why didn’t he just prophesize that Luke would steal the Master Bolt? Sure prophecies depicted in destinies couldn’t be avoided and all, but did Apollo specifically prophesize that Luke had to become a kleptomaniac psycho?

                While Pax was having a meltdown over predestination and destiny, Apollo frowned at the girl leaning on his car.

                The other Demeter children stared at her. Euna clutched a fistful of flowers from the previous fight with the Hecate cabin. Had she not, Pax was pretty sure she’d be grabbing her sister’s neck.

                Euna dropped the flowers and stormed towards her sister. Her gait slowed when she remembered Joey spoke with a god. “Sorry Lord—um—Apollo,” she said tightly, “My sister doesn’t know how much of a presumptuous brat she can be.”

                From what Pax could see, Euna wasn’t the only one ready for angry storming. Chiron had a firm hand on Percy’s shoulder as a pleading recommendation of restraint.

                Joey pushed off the car, ignoring Euna and the other half-bloods. She tiptoed towards Apollo like she was stepping on the heads of men whose hearts she’d crushed. “I—” She shot a look to her sister. “—know exactly how I can be with a handsome, talented, intelligent, and charming god.” Each descriptor was emphasized with a step, ending with her smiling at Apollo. “Such a reasonable divinity would surely be willing to accept a challenge for his quest.”

                Pax vaguely remembered Joey saying something about how she’d make a good daughter of Aphrodite. Pax now had to agree with that: she was definitely manipulative enough to be a child of Aphrodite. Apollo forgot whatever was bothering him earlier to inhale all those compliments. With how inflated his ego appeared to be, Pax was surprised he didn’t pop.

                “I am all those things,” Apollo agreed. “What is your challenge?”

                “You can’t be serious!” Percy exclaimed. Annabeth face-palmed.

                Chiron was starting to look worried. Several other campers made comments of surprise or exasperation.

                Euna’s jaw dropped. “ _Are_ you serious?!”

                “A dance contest!” Joey cut her off.

                That sounded about as ludicrous to Pax as a water buffalo toss. Apollo didn’t seem to mind. A smile charmed his lips.

                “If I beat you—” Joey started.

                “Impress!” Euna interrupted, “If she impresses you!”

                When challenging a god in the realm of talent, either phrasing was suicide. The method just went from jumping out a 100 story building to a 10 story building. She was still going to die.  

                “If I impress you,” She sneered at her sister before returning her attention—much more gently—to the god. “Then you’ll send me on your quest.”

                “You know, I dated Terpsichore, the goddess of dance,” Apollo said. “I’m about as amazing at that as I am at everything I do so… really amazing.” He bobbed his head around once like he was trying to look sophisticated. Pax was, once again, annoyed it worked. Several campers, male and female, swooned.

                Pax had danced before. Before he joined Kronos’s army, he’d enjoyed it more than he’d ever be willing to admit in front of other guys. Girls, sure, they’d swoon. But guys would try a different style of dancing that involved their fists and Pax was more of a feet traditionalist.

                Normally, this would be exciting, but Pax _really_ needed that quest.

                A rink appeared in the middle of the cabin’s horseshoe. There were two elevated platforms with checkered DDR-looking boards for someone that had, maybe, an extra four pairs of feet. In front of the platform lay a golden box—that Apollo explained—was a motion detector and a screen. Pax had to wonder: if Apollo could just make platforms like this appear, did he ever drop them on enemy’s heads in battle or did he use them purely for shaming mortals?

                Joey upturned her nose about the DDR mat. “ _Real_ dancing can’t be tested on that,” she muttered, apparently forgetting that Apollo had godly hearing.

                “This isn’t a normal DDR mat, sweetheart,” he chided, apparently unoffended. With the press of one button, the screen turned on.

                Pax figured that was like telling someone McDonalds wasn’t healthy for them: completely unnecessary and obvious. By the time Apollo had magicked this all together—with the help of Matt and a few other Hepheastus children—most of the campers were back from breakfast. Too late, Chiron pointed out they had a theater for this sort of thing, but the eminency of the location called special attention to the match.

                However, Apollo might not have wanted to bother moving because of whatever scared Apollo earlier—Zeus wanting to murder him or something? That sounded like a pretty standard problem. Pax had to wonder if Apollo remembered that when he agreed to this challenge. Other than keeping the location the same to save time, he seemed unconcerned.

                In all the commotion, Pax lost track of the top dogs at camp. Once Percy helped to carry a grumbling Nico out of the way, he and Annabeth had been talking furiously off to one side. Fortunately for Pax, Percy either didn’t understand what whispering was, or didn’t care if everyone heard him. Before Percy disappeared into the roving crowd of campers, Pax was pretty sure he heard him say, “—whether Mr. Hot Air wants us to or not. I’m not leaving Rachel’s life in the hands of some new brat.”

                Pax liked the idea of Percy going after this quest even less than he liked the idea of Joey.

                Pax had enough worry with just her. Either Joey was a phenomenal dancer or she aspired to get run over by a Ferrari LaFerrari, which—Pax had to admit—would be a flaming way to go out. She had a confident smile as she stretched. From that and the way Apollo kept grinning at her, he was worried she was about to steal Pax’s quest. He considered accepting eternal mockery from the Hermes cabin, taking off his combat boots and entering the challenge but he doubted a few bats from his eyelashes would enchant Apollo as much as Joey’s did. Remembering some of his mythology, they _might_ but Pax didn’t want this quest enough to have a love struck Apollo singing him bad haikus.

                Everyone was excited for… whatever they thought this was. This was unprecedented: having the sun god and one of the new girls in a special showing of _So You Think You Can Dance Better Than a God_. Travis and Connor Stoll claimed those returning to the cabins late needed to pay a watching fee and had to pitch into their betting pool.

                Judging from Euna’s expression—even if Joey won this competition—Pax might not need to worry. Joey would never do the quest. Because Euna would kill her as soon as her feet left that platform. She stood at the base, shouting something up to her sister, who pointedly ignored her.

                Pax was contemplating how to sabotage this dance when he registered how sick Kally looked. Sweat glistened on her pale face and streaked into her eyes to tear them up. She hugged herself. He wanted to ask if she was okay, though knew that was the most annoying question to hear when you looked like that.

                Before he could act on his worry, the screen lit up. Pax had never played DDR, but he assumed it must have looked like the normal start screen since several older campers mentioned their favorite songs to dance to. By flicking his hands in the air, Apollo moved through the options, “Hephaestus optimized the movement sensors on this, so it’s way better than anything you’ve seen on the Wii or the ConnectX.”

                “Not hard to do,” a child of Athena muttered.

                “I figured I’d give you home turf advantage,” Apollo said with another flick of the wrist.

                Most of the song list changed to a language that Pax couldn’t identify; however, in the upper right hand corner, a tag read _Korean Pop Edition_. He really hoped Apollo wasn’t just stereotyping, else it could be really awkward if she were, like, a ballet dancer.

                A difficulty bar came up. The only option was _God Mode_.

                An electronic beat pulsed out.

                “If you lose,” he said to Joey, who calmly awaited instructions from the screen, “you’re buying me coffee at _Poor Poet_ ’s open mic night.” He winked.

                For the first time in her interaction with the god, her demeanor broke. Joey went red, then she forced a smile that looked more like someone had hooked the ends of her lips and pulled them back. Apparently she wasn’t into the idea of open mic nights.

                The plasma screen lit up brilliantly with the image of some K-pop guy on a throne. The upper corners of the TV flashed with a scoreboard. When directional markers spilled down the screen, everyone murmured in bewilderment. They came fast, and in symbols much more complicated than arrows. The match started and both dancers began to dance.        

 

* * *

 

                For Apollo being a god, Pax was a little disappointed. True, Apollo wasn’t the god of dance, but he was the god of music and light. Had this been a Guitar Hero contest, Pax could imagine the crazy light show and power solos that might come. With dancing… eh… Apollo wasn’t bad. Thinking back on his prior haiku, Pax had to wonder if Apollo’s performances were like what his friend Flynn had once said about fan fiction: for every beautifully crafted, thought out story, there were twenty parasites that insulted your intelligence more than a commercial for healthy McDonald’s food.

                Once again, Pax didn’t understand any of the words the male singer rapped until, “Wow! Fantastic baby! _Dance_!”

                Both Apollo and Joey twisted, gyrated, hopped, and moved to the manic beat with grace and style. This most definitely _was_ Joey’s dance style. Although Pax hadn’t noticed it at first, her haircut and makeup made her look like a K-pop star. With all the commands issued from the screen, Pax would have drowned but Joey executed the moves with fluidity and confidence. Not only that, she was having fun. She mouthed the words through a half-smirk, her countenance uplifted with aloof smugness.

                The campers, especially the male campers, noticed.

                After awhile, Apollo noticed.

                Initially, he was distracted. At first, it was by the sky. He kept glancing away from the instructions on the screen to scan nervously upward, like he was waiting for a lighting strike. Then he noticed her.

                Joey was, arguable, at least on par with him. The god didn’t seem to mind. If anything, he looked riveted.

                To Pax’s horror, Apollo missed a few steps. His score on the board decreased. Unconcerned, the god smirked. “I don’t think this is quite enough to judge properly.” Savoring the words, he instructed the machine, “Partner mode.”

                Several campers mumbled in confusion about the unprecedented game play. While Joey continued to embody the music and physically illustrate the notes, their separate platforms merged into one. All the commands on the screen altered to combo moves between the two dancers.

                Apollo slipped behind her to lift Joey into the air. Joey laughed.

                The crowd “ooo”ed and “aww”ed.

                Euna gagged. She looked furious. “That creep needs to get his hands off my sister,” she growled.

                But the universe was less responsive to her wishes than to the god’s as the biased universe tended to be. At first, Pax didn’t quite understand her concern. Apollo looked—what? About three years older? Then Pax remembered he should multiple that by like… one thousand to make it three thousand and… well, in mortal terms, that would be dating a recycled dust pile. Pax tried to imagine Apollo as a fifty year old guy and this scene got real creepy real fast.[2]

                While Pax debated if he could call the cops on Mr. Creep, the dancing match came to a close. From the way Apollo sidled up next to Joey, a little too close and with a little too much charm, Pax could tell Joey had done more than impress him.

                Meaning, Pax—and his quest—were in a lot of trouble.

 

* * *

 

                After the thunder boomed, Apollo left the camp faster than Pax could say, “electrical burn.” Apollo gave Joey a rag-tag haiku prophecy, that wasn’t really a haiku since it was too many syllabus in one spot and two few in another, told her to pick two people to go on her quest—

                “Calex,” she immediately answered.

                Calex hadn’t been paying much attention to the aftereffects of the competition, instead focusing on the unprecedented storm forming near camp. When he heard his name, he paled, “What?”

                “And I guess, if I _have_ to take another person, I’ll take my sister,” Joey said with a roll of the eyes.

                Euna looked like she was still waiting for the next main event: how to strangle your sister in one paragraph of description or less. Pax was surprised Joey even picked her.

                After the quest-goers were selected and the prophecy given, Apollo proved gods could run faster than any Olympic runner—Pax giggled despite himself. He meant the modern ones, but it was fitting regardless. The sun god raced back to his Ferrari LaFerrari and grabbed the fallen bumper; Pax would never know if it would spontaneously burst into a solar flare once the car became the sun. This also prevented him from discovering if children of Hades could—in fact—come in any shade other than skeleton.

                Once the sun god was done riding off in all of his dented glory, Chiron broke up the gathering. He needed to prepare these unsuspecting heroes for their new quest. With the disappearance of their Oracle, Chiron felt their evening games inappropriate. Counselors rallied campers to go to quickly suggested activities. Connor and Travis were placing bets on whether or not something _else_ would happen in the center of the cabins besides an evolved version of one of their previous pranks—Pax heard they tossed a golden mango with the words “to the hottest” into the Aphrodite cabin once—and a visit from the sun dude.

                Once Pax had received Phobetor’s blessing, he thought this quest would be in the bag, or—in his case—in the belt pouch. Now his mind flipped into overdrive for recalculations. He puffed out his cheeks and popped them.

                At first, Pax was afraid the Apollo campers were going to rush off to shoot things, look pretty, wreck rich people cars, be lyrically challenged and do whatever else Apollo children did. However Will was fretting too much over Nico to give directions.

                “Kally…”he said. She stood beside him, too awed by her dad’s exit to move from her huddled position. Pax gave her a devil’s grin. “How do you feel about being kidnapped again?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

[1] Don’t worry Jason fan girls. Pax will get his for this.

[2] I’m calling you out on this shit Riordan! When you put Apollo and Reyna together, it will be CREEPY! And a bad message to teenages everywhere. “It’s okay if he’s a pedophile if he’s hot” It’s only slightly less with Sadie and Anubis because Anubis doesn’t know how old he is!


	15. Kalypso: When Familial Conversation isn’t Enough, Resort to Sleep Darts

Fifteen: Kalypso

When Familial Conversation isn’t Enough, Resort to Sleep Darts[1]

 

                   “Are you admitting what you did earlier was a kidnapping?” Kally asked.

                Pax’s smirk made his multicolored eyes twinkle. He shrugged innocently. “It’s not a kidnapping until you resist. Until then, it is a rescue.”

                Infallible logic.

                “Here though,” he continued like he hadn’t contradicted his prior word choice, “unless you need saving from a monochromatic T-shirt selection, kidnapping might be a better word. Plus, it decreases the chances of you getting in trouble when I fail and we get caught.” He grinned again.

                But it _would_ be rescuing. Kally hugged herself. She didn’t want to be here anymore. She almost preferred the idea of this being one huge, insomnia induced hallucination. She was okay with the looks Merry would give her when she reached proper clarity and explained it to her. Merry would say, “you need to lay off the Mountain Dew.”

The idea of that spoiled, self-centered, bi-polar flirt being her father—that needed escaping. That wasn’t her dad. That wasn’t a god. That wasn’t what a god was supposed to be. If people in this camp were suggesting her mother would be interested in some cheap fake tan and a lyricist with less inspiration than that internet hit… what was it called? Friday? No. She _couldn’t_ be here.

                “But where are we going?” she asked as an afterthought. She almost didn’t care. Heat rushed her cheeks when she realized how dumb the question was. All the morning events cleared her mind: the Oracle and Howe Caverns.

                Before he could answer, she altered her question to the real one, “Why do you want this quest so bad?” Sure, the concept of a quest sounded awesome—she’d been to enough _Dice & Drakins _sessions to get excited at the mention but… that also sounded like eminent permadeath.

                “Impress a lady,” Pax stated lightly. “Why else do guys do stupid things?”

                The impulse to hit Pax that he so uniquely inspired in Kally—it returned.

                Out of all the people scattering for activities, one of the Hermes campers noticed Pax wasn’t walking with them. He jogged over.

                “Chris!” Pax opened his arms like he wanted to hug him.

                Chris rejected the embrace by crossing his arms. “You’re not going,” he said firmly.

                Pax made his lower lip tremble, making Kally wonder if he practiced facial expressions every morning in the mirror: _10 reps of sad puppy face—go!_

                “I’m not going to hug you?” Pax finished Chris’ comment as a question.

                Though Chris looked like he wanted to smile, he kept a straight face. “You know what I meant. You’re not going with them on that quest. I don’t know why you want it so bad, or why Phobetor wants you on it, but leaving camp without permission can cause expulsion and other punishments.”

                “Can it really?” Pax switched up from his sad puppy face to his smug kitty smirk. “How many people have been expelled for leaving camp without permission?”

                Chris’ confident posture slummed a little. He glanced at the ground. “Um—I… don’t actually know. Everyone who left—”

                “They were rewarded weren’t they?” Pax asked skeptically. “Or the misdeed was completely forgotten because of heroics?”

                “ No…” Chris mumbled uncertainly.

                Pax grabbed Kally’s wrist and tugged her past Chris.

                “Where are you going?” Chris jogged to keep up, though it wasn’t that difficult; Kally almost face-planted with the force of sheer Pax energy.

                “We’re going to talk to my brother,” Pax said.

                None of the counselors tried to stop their progress towards the hill. Either they were directing the campers to activities or were too distracted by the Demeter sisters. Euna slapped Joey’s face and shouted at her for being so rash. This caused a lot of “oo”ing from the loitering Connor and Travis. Had one of Kally’s siblings done something so stupid, she would have slapped them too. Except her brothers and sister could beat her up.

                Chris darted in front of them, hands outstretched. “You are not going to talk to Axel unescorted,” he stated firmly.

                “Oh! I didn’t realize you wanted to see him too! You’ll make a great chaperone.” Though Kally didn’t understand why Pax looked so elated, she got the distinct feeling he’d backed Chris into a predesigned mental trap, likely with little monster wind-up toys. That seemed to be Pax’s style. She half-expected him to tap his fingers together evilly.

                Chris paled, his arms lowering. “I—”he stammered.

                Pax nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right. We should have less of a coward. I can go get Jason. I’m sure seeing him would _shock_ Axel. Eh? Eh?” Pax glanced at Kally, then over to Chris.

                Kally grunted, understanding why Axel spent much of his time sighing at Pax.

                “Jason?” If Chris paled much more, Kally was pretty sure he’d go translucent and need to be painted back into existence.

                “Sure.” Pax tilted his head down, casting a shadow over his eyes. “Jason could take Axel and me if we tried anything, right? Or do you think Axel and I could take him down before he knew what hit him?”

                This no longer sounded like assurance but a hypothetical question. Kally remembered how much she didn’t want to be associated with them when she first came in. Maybe she shouldn’t blindly agree to do… whatever they were doing. Rescue the Oracle? How did Pax manage to make this seem so sinister? She wondered how suspicious he looked when he and Axel picked up groceries. “ _Yes, two oranges—MUHAHAHA!—oh there’s nothing wrong with the oranges. That’s just a twitch I have.”_

                “You’re not—you’re not here to—” Chris glanced around, but no one was close enough to bother them. Connor Stoll was watching them out of the corner of his eyes when he wasn’t goading on the Demeter sisters. Chris leaned close to Pax. “You’re not here to _kill_ him are you?”

                While Chris was close, Pax grabbed his face. For a startled moment, Kally thought he might kiss him. Instead, Pax pinched both his cheeks and tugged them out, making him resemble a squirrel that was amply stuffed with nuts. “Look at you! All alive and squishy!” Pax said with a grin.

                Chris batted his hands away. “Quit trying to change the subject!” he snapped.

                Puppy dog frown time. “I wasn’t… I just forgot how squishy your face was…”

                Chris folded his arms, staring Pax down. This kid must have had an infinite amount of patience to deal with Pax so calmly.[2]

                Meanwhile, Kally felt like she was a couple thousand seconds behind in the conversation. “Wait,” she muttered, “You want to _kill_ someone?”

                Considering they were dealing with demigods, the sentiment might have been naive. There must have been a lot of half-blood-on-half-blood violence during the Titan war, but… from the way Grover talked about it on their van ride over, he made it sound minimal to nonexistent.

                Pax glanced between Kally and Chris then sighed. “Axel and I couldn’t have planned to kill Jason,” he grumbled. “We didn’t know he was here. Last I checked, he was in California wearing over glorified sheets and bashing his head in during Senate meetings.”

                Chris continued to stare at him. By now, Kally knew Pax well enough to understand why: Pax hadn’t clarified that they weren’t going to try something, just that he and Axel didn’t have the knowledge for forethought.

                An offended huff erupted from Pax as he threw his hands in the air. “Okay! I’ll go talk to Percy about it too. Will that make you feel better?”

                “Yes. Yes, it will,” Chris said.

_No_ , Kally thought _, No, it won’t._

                Without a response, Pax pivoted toward the cabins, dragging Kally along. She was starting to feel like a rag doll. All of her impulses told her to get _away_ from the cabins. True, Apollo probably wouldn’t come back anytime soon after making such a panicked retreat. Those people who thought they were her siblings might catch her though. Anyone who could accept that… _child_ as their father… she didn’t want to be near them. However, maybe they were just as offended as she was. Maybe they were tearing up the cabin, making that golden porch into some glittery confetti.

                To her disappointment, they weren’t using the building as a very expensive piñata. Chiron trotted to the Big House with a scowling Joey, an enraged Euna, and Calex—who looked so miserable, he might make a better horror movie prop than a real person. Most of the cabins separated for their activities. The Stoll brothers must have decided Pax and Chris were safe to be left alone, a sentiment that only a convict might share; none of the Hermes campers were about, though Kally did see a banner along Cabin Six’s porch that read: _Our big brain am winning again! We are the greetest!_ She wondered when they sneaked that up in the chaos.

                Will, Reyna and several other camp counselors were fretting over Nico. When Kally first saw him, she got worried. He looked nauseous and scared. Apparently, the whole him-losing-solidity was Greek-half-blood abnormal and not just normal abnormal. She was learning to sort the two.

                When Will put a hand on Nico’s shoulder, the trembling child of Hades shoved him away. He snapped something and stormed towards the lake. Will frowned, shouted, and rose to go after him, but the counselor of Zeus held him back. In his place, the praetor strode after Nico.

                Kally wished she could help, but she knew the last thing he wanted was more people to fuss over him. She knew the feeling. Well, not the I-almost-melted-into-a-freaky-Halloween-decoration-and-need-alone-time-to-freak-out feeling. She knew how anxious she got around crowds of people focused on her. Although she’d only talked to him a handful of times—and really, most of the “talking” was her focusing on not fainting from embarrassment—he seemed to have the same anxiety.

                “Huh.” Pax frowned. “He better be dating Will and not Reyna,” he muttered.

                For a second, she wasn’t quite sure what Pax was talking about. After Nico and Will’s little exchange—she could feel her face heat up at the thought—she was pretty sure Will and Nico were about to be a thing. Really, that might be easier for all parties. Will would be happy. Nico would be angry and happy. And Kally would sigh from a distance and _know_ she didn’t have a chance with him instead of speculating she didn’t. Sometimes defeat was easier than tentative hope.

                Despite all that, she had to wonder, “Why? Do you… like her or something?” The question felt stupid, though Pax _did_ get quiet and nervous as soon as the Romans showed up. She had the chilling image of Pax tying a rose and a note that read “ _You are Gorgeous”_ onto one of his weasels for delivery. Reyna would receive a couple of dented petals, a half-eaten note saying “ _You are Gorg_ ,” and probably a dead animal. Kally didn’t want to be a jerk and tell him he had no chance…. But she felt like she had to be a jerk and tell him he had no chance.

                Pax gave such a boisterous laugh; he grabbed his stomach. “No!” he cried. “No! Reyna scares the wits out of me and that’s hard because I’m pretty witty.” He quieted to a chuckle as they approached the Dionysus cabin. She needed to start keeping a lie counter for Pax throughout the day. “No,” he continued, “Reyna isn’t really my type. I need a girl that won’t punch me through a wall every time I tease her.”

_Memo to Self: Find way to punch Pax through a wall_.

                “Where are you going?”

                Both jumped. One of Kally’s siblings, Austin, had sneaked up behind them while they were talking. He smirked and stood with his hands on his hips. None of Kally’s other siblings—other than Will, being comforted by Jason—were around. She noticed how little Apollo’s visit seemed to bother Austin. He still looked calm and confident. “We were going to the armory to fletch some more specialty arrows and Hermes cabin went to the lake.” He eyed Pax suspiciously.

                Pax patted Kally’s shoulder. “We’re going to visit my brother, but we needed to drop by the cabins first. Kally finally worked up the courage to tell my brother she loves him. She’s a little nervous so—”

                “What?!” Kally said, sure she’d heard him wrong.

                Pax gave her a sympathetic smile. “No need to be embarrassed.” He waved his hand and turned to Austin with a knowing look. “You know how shy she is,” he whispered.

                “Pax!” Kally protested. “N—No!”

                Austin looked as stunned as she felt, though… a lot less horrified.

                “Kally,” Pax comforted, “It’s understandable. My brother is completely irresistible after all. Now, Austin—”

                Kally shoved at Pax’s arm. True, he didn’t go through a wall, but it was the first thing that came to mind. She was too frozen with panic to come up with something more effective.

                “Rude,” Pax stated like she had verbally interrupted him. “Kally, I’m just trying to speed us on our way.” He gave her a look. This and the explanation did nothing; he could have been trying to save her from a tank full of truck-sized praying mantises and she’d still want to punch his face in. Pax cleared his throat. “Anyway, Austin, with how embarrassed she is, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell everyone why we’re going to visit him, or really—if you could come up with an excuse as to why we’re gone…”

                He left it to Austin’s imagination.

                Austin glanced from Kally’s mortified expression back to Pax. “Uh—sure—um…” Pax’s bluntness put him at a loss for words. A smile wormed onto his face. “I guess, just meet us at the armory after you’re done. Good luck Kally.” He nodded in encouragement, turned, and left.

                Falling over seemed an easier option than continuing forward.

                Pax, however, continued forward without a problem.

                “What was that?!” Kally demanded. She scurried to catch up with him.

                “ _Making People Uncomfortable_ ,” Pax said in his commercial buy-this-game-or-you’ll-be-lame voice. “The fastest way to get people to leave you alone with the least number of questions.”

                He had that right. Kally fumed, “But now they’ll think I actually like your brother… like _that_.” She finished the sentence uneasily. There was no reason to dislike Axel. Though she knew Merry wouldn’t blink at his age, the two year age gap felt the size of the Grand Canyon… especially if the Gran Canyon measured awesome and Kally had fallen into the gap of despair.

                “So?”

                “I don’t like your brother like that!” she exclaimed.

                “Oh…” Pax mumbled. He paused, puffed out his cheeks and popped his lips.

                From what she’d seen, this meant he was thinking. She guessed it wasn’t coincidental that they’d paused outside Cabin Twelve. Light shimmered through the window and music thumped through the walls. Vines wrapped around the porch pillars. The overwhelming cloy of pressed grapes made Kally want to ask Zeus for a good summer breeze—autumn breeze? The climate control was really messing with her perception of the seasons, though she was from Virginia so what else was new—but to ask Zeus for a good forty mile per hour wind to flush that smell out.

                “What are we doing here?” she asked. Though she’d only run a few feet to catch up with him, she felt exhausted. Pax did that to people.

                “Don’t you want your friend coming along?” He winked at Kally as he knocked on the door.

                Merry’s older half-brother, Pollux, opened it immediately. He was in mid-laugh as he turned to them. The demigod was at least Axel’s age, if not a little older. He towered over Pax and Kally by at least six inches. Between that, his stunning violet eyes and his fluffy blond hair, Kally nearly stopped breathing. Strange—when his laugh stopped, his lips melted into a slight frown, as though that was his normal expression. From what Kally knew about Dionysus in legends, that seemed odd. Then she remembered the pouty Mr. D.

                “Hey,” Pollux greeted and leaned one arm against the door frame. The door was mostly shut so they couldn’t see anything but a leopard’s skin pinned to one wall.

                Instead of greeting him back or asking for Merry like a normal half-blood would, Pax tilted his head and asked, “Do you have animal carcasses on every wall?”

                That faint smile returned to Pollux’s lips as he tapped the wall beside him, “This one is open if you’re volunteering.”

                Pax gave his devil grin and a thumps up. “Nope! Just wanted to let you know that _People Eating Tasty Animals_ approves of your interior design. Also, your name starts and ends with the best letters of the alphabet.”

                While Pax was busy being an idiot, Kally managed to get her mouth working, “Is Merry in?”

                The door jerked as Merry jump-hugged Pollux from behind. Pollux had to tighten his grip on the door frame so the Amazon-sized woman didn’t knock him over. Amazon sized… Kally had to wonder if there actually _were_ Amazons running around if Greek demigods were.

                The smile on Merry’s face made Kally feel relaxed and… a little delirious. She blinked, touching Pax’s shoulder for balance. This reminded her of how she felt right after she’d gotten her wisdom teeth removed.

                Sweat glistened on Merry’s cheeks and her jaw jutted slightly to one side—a trait Kally noticed when they had a chemistry test or when Merry found out they’d have to run a mile in gym class. Merry hated running.[3]

               Before Kally could figure out what caused her to feel lightheaded, Merry sang, “Kallllly! Feels like it has been ages since I’ve seen you girl. Get in here.”

                Comfort swelled in Kally’s chest. They never got to talk once they got into camp. They were supposed to—about Merry’s bruised face and about Kally’s… dad. Even though she doubted they’d be able to have those conversations soon, well, the conversation about Merry’s face since they didn’t need to talk about Apollo, it was calming to see her.

                Merry threw the door open. She turned her nose up at Pax. “I might need to have TSA check you fast for trouble, because you gotta leave whatever baggage you have outside, little man.”

                Pax made a motion like he was ripping out his heart, accompanied by an overdramatic squishing sound. He then mimed dropping it and followed Kally inside.

                Cabin Twelve was beautiful.

                Frescos of grape vines seemed to intermix with actual grape vines along the walls. Pollux hadn’t lied: there was an animal skin for each wall except the door’s. The one on the right was clearly a leopard, but she couldn’t identify the other two. A circular mosaic decorated the floor, with dolphins swimming closest to a fountain in the center and satyrs and nymphs dancing closer to the walls. The white fountain sprayed an unending supply of burgundy liquid. Beside the fountain were curved armchairs, that Pollux later explained were called klismos, and a bench. There were only three beds in the whole cabin, making it feel vast compared to the others.

                Two were pressed on one wall, and the single one—with Merry’s green parka—was opposite. One had crumpled up Camp Half-Blood shirts and jeans littering the unmade sheets, the floor, and the trunk at the base of the bed. Another had a beat-up brown box, several knickknacks, photographs and a stack of neatly folded clothing on top.

                At the base of the fountain lay a disco ball, an iPod speaker blaring music, streamers, and other party supplies.

                “Is that… wine?” Pax eyed the fountain suspiciously. He and Kally both stopped just inside the cabin, unsure where they were supposed to stand in the near-empty room.

                Pollux waved off the question with a humorous grunt. “Grape juice. Though sometimes it turns to Kool Aid when Dakota comes to visit. I heard Cabin Three has a fountain too, but I think this one adds a little more color to the room.”

                The sheets and drapery did, in fact, match the color of the grape juice, and the fountain _did_ bring everything together.

                “Hmmm, who told you Cabin Three has a fountain?” Merry asked Pollux. She put a hand against the small of both Kally and Pax’s backs and pushed them toward the center. Once she had them by a bench on the other side of the fountain, she walked over to her nightstand to grab several chalices.

                While she was distracted, Pax slowly reached into his pocket to withdraw Dakota’s drinking flask. He stood on his tiptoes to balance it on the top tier of the fountain for added decoration.

                “Annabeth,” Pollux answered. He helped fill the chalices and distribute them. When he noticed the flask on the fountain, he rolled his eyes. “Pft, I even told Dakota a Hermes kid probably stole it,” he said, looking skeptically over at the sheepish Pax.

                “Oh!” Merry waggled her eyebrows. She gave Kally a conspiratory smirk. “I wonder how frustrated Annabeth is going to be when she realizes Percy can’t sneak her in at night with that twelve-year-old there.”

It seemed natural to Kally that Merry already knew the names of the popular kids and their relationships. Merry likely drilled Pollux during her first day, demanding he show her around and explain every invasive story she could worm out of him. Though it made Merry sound vain, Kally knew she did it for an incredibly good reason: to know who to and who not to tick off and how to do it when necessary.

                Annabeth sneaking into Percy’s cabin though? Had Will ever tried to sneak Nico into their cabin? More logically, he’d probably tried to sneak to Nico’s, since she’d seen way less sexy Goth children running around than sun children. Well, really, only the one: Sexy Goth Prince Nico. The thought made her blush and frown. She hoped Nico was doing better. The look of fear on his face had startled her.

                Merry and Pollux took the two klismos, dragging them closer to the bench. Belated, Kally realized Merry had intentionally left Kally and Pax on the slightly—too-crunched bench. One day, she’d get Merry back for all of this.

                “So…” Pax swirled his glass, staring at the continents. “Can you get healed by wine or grape juice or strawberry pies the way Percy can get healed by water? And can you make wine just appear in a blaze of blasphemous glory?”

                Pollux snorted into his chalice. “He’s exactly as you described him,” he breathed into the cup.

                “I’ve been described?” Pax asked in excitement. “Were the words ‘gift from the gods’ used?”

                Though she might normally have kept the thought to herself, Kally found herself muttering, “More like pestilence.”

                Pax gave her a grin.

                Pollux lowered his chalice slightly, considering Pax’s prior question. “Only day two here and you already know about Percy’s powers. I guess he is a legend by now.” Casually, he put his drink on the ground. Balancing the cup took him an extra try to assure it didn’t spill. “Shouldn’t you two be at your cabins’ activities?”

                “Shouldn’t you?” Pax shot back. The question reminded Kally of their encounter with Austin. She tried to figure out the best angle to spill juice all over Pax if he dared to… express her everlasting love for his brother.

                The cabin counselor gave Pax a skeptical look. “We are,” he stated, “Merry said this room wasn’t festive enough.”

                Merry bobbed her head. “I’m trying to figure out how to install lights and a disco ball—Kally, I might need your siblings to rig some mirrors for me. It’ll be so much fun!” She hummed out the last part.

With all of Merry’s energy, Kally got the distinct feeling Merry was distracting them. In the past, when Kally had picked Merry up from her house after she and her dad got into a fight, Merry would be in tears. Right after she expressed her distraught, she’d force a smile and push into lighter conversation, like the topic switch was as easy as wading through a line of eight-yea- olds at a _Frozen_ signing. This felt the same.

                Then Kally thought to ask. “Where is your other sibling?” Up close, she could see Merry’s bubbly handwriting on the box on the bed:

_Castor_

                She wondered if Castor had left and those were things he didn’t need at… whatever his other home was.

                The room’s joviality crumbled into a pile of discomfort. This was exactly what Merry had been trying to avoid. She immediately placed a hand on Pollux’s. His face paled and he hunched. That natural frown followed his gaze and sanguine to the floor.

                “It’s just us,” Merry said. That smile was more forced than before. Kally realized how exhausted she looked. Maybe the nightmares hadn’t stopped for Merry like they had for the others but… maybe something else was happening. In the past, Merry could always make people feel more relaxed and lift their spirits. Knowing she was a daughter of Dionysus… could she do that the same way children of Apollo could heal others?

                Kally didn’t want to ask what happened to Castor.

                The clink of a chalice brought Kally’s attention to her side. Pax had lost interest in the drink. His head tilted down, hair obscuring half his face, leaving his dark eye to stare glassily through Pollux. “Battle of the Labyrinth or Titan War?” he asked quietly.

                “Battle of the Labyrinth. Stabbed through the arm. Hit on the head.” Casual, like reciting the death of a _Game of Thrones_ character.

                “Did he look like you?”

                Pollux swallowed. “He was my twin brother.”

                “I’m sorry,” Pax whispered. From what Kally could see, Pax’s eye was red and watery.

                The word _stab_ kept, appropriately, pricking her brain. _Stabbed_ in a _battle._ It didn’t feel real, just something scripted out of _Dice & Drakins_. In real life, because _her_ brother made so many dumb decisions, she’d become desensitized to hospital trips for broken bones, but _stabbed_ felt permanent.

                Judging from the silence in the room, it was.

                Although she didn’t know Pollux, Kally wanted to hug him. She doubted he would feel it with how vapid his expression was. Then he shook his head, cleared his throat, and looked around the room.

Merry’s smile gentled and became more genuine. “You’re alright, big guy,” she said.

“It happened awhile ago,” he said, like it validated her assurance. He examined Kally and Pax. “What did you want to talk to my sister about?”

                Pax didn’t say anything. From the trembling in his hands, Kally wondered if he could. Before the question lingered long enough to sound suspicious, Kally blurted, “Merry, we wanted you to come with us to save the Oracle.” Then she remembered what they were doing _was_ suspicious.

                The grief was shocked off Pollux’s face. “What? You can’t—the quest was assigned to Joey. She even got a prophecy—”

                “Pax,” Merry casually called. The excitement of Pollux’s reaction jerked Pax back to his normal self. He glanced up, alert and intent with this distraction. Merry tilted her head, “Would you dart him kindly?”

                Pollux didn’t have a chance.

                The request didn’t seem to register for Pollux before Pax’s hands went to his belt. With the dexterity of a bunny that ingested three hundred Pixie Stixs, the dart flicked from its holster, into and out of a vial, and flew across the room.

                Pollux was about to stand when the dart _thwacked_ into his arm. His jaw gaped at Merry, his eyes rolled up, and he collapsed back into his chair.

                Disbelief made Kally gawk between Merry and Pax. “You—you two—” She pointed accusingly between the two of them. “You can’t hang out anymore! That—that is bad behavior!”

                Merry sighed, stretched, and slumped back into her own chair. “Oh, relax Kally. You woke up fine after he darted you—”

                “Yea! I’m still mad about that!” _And about how all of you take it so lightly!_ She mentally added.

                With the back of his hand, Pax wiped the redness from his eyes. Kally’s offense had distracted her from how he looked like he had a red eyeliner fetish. Though Pollux’s melancholy was chilling and heartbreaking, Pax seemed to take the pain personally. Before she could ask, Pax shrugged that, and her comment, off. “I was trying to keep you safe. Darting you unconscious and making you prone to the enemy just so happened to make the most sense in rash Pax logic.”

                Immediately, she stopped wanting to ask if he was okay. He was good at that.

                Merry clicked her tongue. “Just remember Pax, ‘at the time it made rash Pax sense’ is no excuse for getting Kally killed when you’re on your little trip.”

_Your_. Kally felt that word like the first few of a math word problem: there were too many words and they were already confusing. “Wait—you’re not coming with us?” she asked.

                “Sweetie, I know you’re nervous, but I’m not getting third wheeled on your date,” Merry said, shooting Kally a smile. This made Kally squirm and blush. She tried to remember why she liked Merry, but unfortunately most of Merry’s best traits were simultaneously entertaining and merciless.

                The playful taunt in Merry’s gaze lost to weariness. All of her reserved energy spilled out with her explanation. “I promised Pollux we’d fix up the room today, and we’re not just fixing it up—we’re getting him to focus a little more on life and a little less on death.” She vaguely gestured to Castor’s belongings. “Plus…” She inhaled shakily. “I’m borrowing Annabeth’s phone later to get mom an appointment with a lawyer. Dad’s… he’s never laying a hand on Nik again.” Tears brimmed her eyes as she scowled fiercely. “I’m making sure of it.”

                Saving the Oracle suddenly felt small and easy.

                The exhaustion that sank Merry into her chair—the reason for it started to become clear. Kally knew Merry argued with her father, but never to that extent. Merry had managed her composure with a smile on her face and a song in her voice since Kally met her in middle school, through her parent’s divorce and her mother’s move to New York. She’d been there for Kally with a suggestive comment or a playful mock anytime Kally needed cheering.

Merry must have been doing that for her brother, Nik, the whole time too, watching as her father… lost himself. Now, she was lifting up the weight of a different half-brother while trying to make sure Nikhil was safe. Merry had previously suggested that her mother was irresponsible, but Kally was shocked that—if Nikhil had gone to New York with bruises—Ms. Blythe wouldn’t be able to take care of it herself.

                Anyone else would get crushed under the weight of that burden.

                With the determination on Merry’s face, Kally knew better than to hug her now. Instead, she stood, crouched beside her friend, hesitated, then touched her arm. “Do you want me to stay—”

                “Sweetie,” Merry inhaled shakily to compose herself. “You have less than twelve hours to save an Oracle and you need to outpace Apollo’s team and probably Percy Jackson to do it. I’m going to remodel this crib, have some girl talk with my mother, and—when you get back—we’ll have a huge cryfest, complete with a rewatch of the movie _Up._ ”

                Kally managed to return the smile.

                Then Merry’s eyes narrowed and shot across the room. Similar to their van ride over, Pax stared calmly at them with his multicolored eyes. This time though, he seemed more distant. His gaze kept flicking to Castor’s box of belongings.

                “Hey,” Merry called his attention. He glanced over. “Just remember, wine originally came from the remains of Dionysus’s friend. If Kally gets hurt, I’ll get the satyrs to rip you apart and ferment you into a nice bottle.”

                Pax blinked, then looked quite impressed. “I’m sure I’d be spicy.”

                Kally got the distinct feeling Merry would lose it if they stayed too long. She gripped her friend’s arm again, rose, and walked to Pax. “How’re we getting to the van without anyone else telling us to go back to our counselors? And—” She remembered someone saying there were guards stationed around Axel. “—any other… obstacles.”

                That devilish grin lit his face. He shuffled into his jacket, muttering, “I’ve got an apple left after this morning so…” He withdrew a glittering gold fruit. “I think we’re going to find Jason.”

 

 

 

[1] I can’t express how badly I wish this was constantly an option when conversing with family -.-

[2] So, I misspelled “patience” as “patients” at first, and I had a imagine of Chris throwing people in hospital gowns at Pax to wear him down.

[3] She’d often expressed how she wanted their gym teacher, Mr. Blanc, to strap two watermelons onto his chest before a run and see how he liked it.


	16. Kalypso: What’s Only Acceptable in a Locker Room?

 

                This was a terrible idea.

                She tried to keep the thought to herself, but upon further reflecting on how bad an idea this was, she had to voice, “This is a terrible idea.”

                “Of course it is,” Pax agreed. Except Pax didn’t say it. A six foot tall, very attractive Ken doll said it. Kally found it _absurdly_ disturbing that he could turn into real people. She wondered if the police officer from the tin can rally was a real person in _serious_ trouble for rousing a bomb threat.

                With great power comes great responsibility. Pax could have the word responsibility explained to him in sixteen different languages, and he’d still think it was a synonym for opportunity-to-wreck-havoc.

                They’d already gotten her messenger bag with the discus from the Apollo cabin and were now making their way toward the hill.

                As they walked, he kept winking at whomever they passed. Kally tried to get him to stop—she’d never seen the real Jason do that—but Pax stated it was the only way a guy with this hair and this lip scar could act. Fortunately, they didn’t pass many people. Most of the girls they did pass blushed, then glanced around in alarm. Likely looking for Piper. From what Kally understood, Piper and Jason were an item.

                “Did you forget something?”

                The question came from behind them and made Kally jump.

                Percy Jackson himself jogged to catch up. Kally wanted to squeak when Ja—Pax stopped walking to face him. Her instinct was to run. She wasn’t normally a rule-breaker and the thought of being caught horrified her. She couldn’t stop thinking about the real Jason running into them and the song _Danger! Danger! High Voltage!_ appropriately starting to play.

                Pax… Jax? Pason? She figured she’d mentally refer to him as “Jason” to decrease confusion. “Jason” calmly faced Percy with a warm grin. “I’ll be over in a bit. Is Will still doing okay?”

                Kally had no idea how Pax knew to ask that question. Then she remembered how upset her half-brother had been about Nico. Last they’d seen, Jason had stopped Will from running after him.

                Percy shrugged. “He’s about as worried as the rest of us. Nico hasn’t had that problem since… well… this summer…” He shook his head and scowled at the sky. “I hope an eclipse happens soon. Someone needs to cool that jerk off.” He looked furious. The look didn’t change when he lowered it. He blinked at her in mild confusion.

                Kally realized she must have seemed terrified. She was. She wanted to exchange a glance with Pax, but was confronted with a muscular shoulder. Though Jason wasn’t her type of guy, that was very distracting.

                As though feeling her discomfort and knowing this make it worse, “Jason” touched her arm. “I had a little detour. She forgot something in the van and didn’t want to go outside the boundary on her own. I was going to escort her and catch up with you after.”

                Percy nodded and relaxed a little. He turned to Kally. “I heard about how you took out the Silver Festus. That’s pretty awesome.”

                Kally stared at their feet. “It wasn’t—uh—just me, but—um—thank you… sir,” she finished lamely. This guy was the legend right? She figured they must show some kind of respect, especially after the dowsing he gave them this morning.

                He put his hands up. “Oh wow! Just Percy is fine.”

                “Jason” clicked his tongue with a smirk. “You’re cute when you’re flustered,” he said.

                “What?” Percy asked like he honestly hadn’t heard him. Kally glanced up in alarm to find the son of Poseidon cocking his head to one side, confused.

                “Jason” chuckled. He turned to leave and, in the same fluid motion, smacked Percy’s backside lower than Kally would dare to smack anyone.

                “See you later,” he said with a wink. “Come on Kally.”

                She was glad he said it, because she’d have gawked all day had he not. Since there was no one to say, “Come on Percy,” she had a feeling Percy would be doing just that. The half-blood stood there, stunned.

                Once they were at least fifteen paces away, “Jason” muttered, “Are you sold on my _Making People Uncomfortable_ idea yet? Works every time.”

                Kally surprised herself with her reaction: she laughed. The response rattled her more than a rough massage chair. This shouldn’t have been funny—Jason and Percy could get into a real fight over that or at least have some minor, awkward… misunderstandings. But Percy couldn’t have looked more startled than, maybe, if he’d just found out his real father was Ares.

                “Jason” was delighted. His scarred lip broke into a wicked smile as he leaned in close to poke her nose. She nearly screamed. She might have let Pax get that close, but not not-Jason. “You’re not you!” she hissed, deciding that was—by far—the most astute thing she’d said that day.

                Confusion struck his face as he glanced down. He appeared to have forgotten who he was.

                She didn’t see how, as he’d shot up at least five inches, paled several shades lighter, and gained around fifty pounds of muscle. However, she’d never shape shifted before. Maybe it felt natural to have instantaneous, half-foot growths spurts, like switching from a butterfly to a megalodon shark.

                “I knew you had a sense of humor,” he cheered. He continued to get more Pax-like expressions as he tilted his head to one side thoughtfully. “All I have to do is make a few more powerful enemies through rash decisions and you’ll be rolling on the floor laughing. Good to know you have my best interests at heart.”

                That mischievousness looked odd on Jason’s face. She hoped the transformation would wear off soon.

                Kally was glad that Pax took them in a wide arch around Thalia’s tree and the dragon. She didn’t know if Peleus was supposed to keep campers in as much as he was supposed to keep intruders out.

                In the morning light, the van came into view. It wasn’t in a ditch anymore, but the bumper and front looked like that _Assassin Creed_ guy, Ezio, had missed a jump and decided to break his fall by murdering Axel’s vehicle.

                Speaking of Axel, the older of the Pax brothers was on the ground outside the van doing pushups.[1] His jacket hung off a nearby tree branch along with some… weird rope-fabric thing that was tied higher up. The sleeves of his white T-shirt were cut off, making Kally wonder who would win in a fight: the real Jason Grace, the apparent ex-praetor of New Rome, or Axel Pax, the… leader of some mysterious group that was gone… she needed to ask Pax and Axel more about their background.

                Just inside the barrier for Camp Half-Blood, Axel’s guard watched him _very_ attentively. Kally recognized her from the Aphrodite cabin, though she couldn’t remember the girl’s name. The girl with blond pigtails wasn’t even armed. Send an unarmed, tiny love godlet to prevent the guy who took out ten children of Ares from doing anything inappropriate? Might as well make one of the _Despicable Me’s_ minions his guard. Then Kally remembered people talking about Piper’s charm speak and about how Pax had gone slack after the empousa sweet talked him. As they got closer, she could see Axel wore his red headphones, likely wary of the same thing.

                Once they got close enough, Kally could hear the girl sigh. She looked sad and thoughtful, fiddling with a key chain on her belt, some kind of Egyptian hieroglyph. She sat with her legs curled up.

                “He’s pretty, isn’t he?” “Jason” asked her.

                The girl jumped. When she saw him, she scrambled to her feet. “I—”

                “Jason” waved her off. “I’ll take it from here.” He pointed to the camp. “Go tell Piper I said…” He searched for something epic. Finally, he settled with bravado on, “hello.”

                Though confused, the girl nodded her head and started towards camp.

                Once done, “Jason” smirked at Kally and whispered, “Let’s mess with Axel.”

                That was the last thing she wanted to do, as that sounded the equivalent of, “let’s mess with a honey badger.”

                Axel noticed them, rose, and slipped his headphones off. Today’s shirt read: _Zeus and I once fought each other. Loser had to wear his sheets for the rest of eternity._

                “I don’t like your shirt,” “Jason” snapped.

                Axel half-smiled. “Shut up Ajax.” He started to rush toward them, but dug his heels in and glanced up the hill. At the tree, Peleus gnawed on what might have once been a goat… or a satyr. Kally wondered if the satyrs were offended whenever someone ate goat in the camp. Regardless, Axel went from excited to concerned.

                In his place, Pax dashed forward. The change was instantaneous and so polar, she didn’t know how she missed it when Pax first transformed. “Jason” slouched his shoulders and cocked his head forward in excitement. With the change in demeanor, he looked a lot more like himself. Kally hadn’t realized how much or how well he’d been acting.

                He got about two paces before something took out his legs.

                Two strips of fur darted out of the grass and into his pants.

                He tumbled the rest of the way towards Axel, shouting, “Hunnie! Baller! I miss—OW!—you—AUGH! Dude—ouch—stop biting me!” As he rolled, his hair and skin darkened, the orange Camp Half-Blood shirt elongating and blackening. By the time he’d wrestled the weasels from his duster jacket, he had his multicolored eyes back. He pouted at Hunnie and Baller, struggling to maintain a grip on them in either hand. “I promised I would come back—look, I brought you dead things.”

                Kally didn’t want to know what dead things were in his jacket pockets. The weasels scattered when Axel knelt beside him. “Make friends?” he asked. His expression was difficult to read. In the bright sunrays, the systematic scars on Axel’s face were more pronounced. The gash from the snapped bowstring looked awful. She had to wonder why he refused the nectar.

                Pax’s eyes twinkled. “Chris is there! And he’s alive!” As opposed to being there and dead. “And they know he was part of Kronos’s army and they don’t care and they have a Pegasus riding area and their lava climbing wall is kinda like a volcano with training wheels, but I got to meet Percy Jackson! And he didn’t try to kill me— _no one_ tried to kill me! Did you know they get _free_ shirts? Why didn’t Luke give _us_ free shirts? Hades, the Romans even have dental!”

                Axel’s eyes widened, though she assumed it didn’t have to do with Rome’s insurance policies. “If they took Chris, that means they’ll take you.”

                Pax’s smile faltered. “Yea… but…” He glanced at the van.

                “Did you find Matt?” Axel asked.

                Discomfort still made Pax shift, but he muttered, “yea. He’s looking in Bunker Nine for our golden net.”

                Kally nodded along like all this meant something to her. Satisfied with Pax’s updates, Axel glanced up. “Hey Kally,” he greeted. She managed a wave before his gaze slipped back to his brother. “Why did you bring Kally? You know this won’t be safe, especially for her.”

                “Why not?” she decided she’d try out the special _asking-important-questions_ technique. Like, “ _Hey Axel, why are you doing workouts in jeans?”_

                Axel’s jaw tightened. “You’re untrained.” Something told her that wasn’t what he originally wanted to say.

                Pax frowned, staring thoughtfully at Axel. “You smell like mouth wash and Febreze.” Kally didn’t understand why this was a problem. With hope, he’d taken a few gallons and dowsed the interior of the van.

                The subject of fresh scents seemed as tense as a conversation about a mutual ex-girlfriend. They stared at each other until, surprisingly, Pax won the contest. Axel broke eye contact to help Pax to his feet. In the exchange, she could have sworn Pax slipped something out of Axel’s pocket.

                “Did the Romans give you any trouble?” Axel asked.

                Pax waggled his eyebrows. “Not yet. Did Reyna give _you_ any trouble? I heard she came to visit you with one of her lady friends. Did you take her for a nice walk around the arena? Get her a gladius? Chicks love gladii—“

                “Kally.” Axel cleared his throat loudly. “Assuming I allow you to come with us, will you run away from a battle if I tell you to?”

_In a heartbeat_. With a total of three hours of half-blood training, she felt even less inclined to repeat the stupidity of the Silver Festus incident. She now knew _how_ untrained she was. The real question was if she’d _stay_ when a fight broke out.

                Kally nodded, gripping her messenger bag and feeling the Argonaut statue therein.

                “Fall in,” he said with a smile. He motioned them towards the van. She tried to imagine him saying that to Reyna if he took the praetor on a date. She’d probably go to hit him, he’d block her, then they’d stand there with Axel grinning sheepishly and Reyna glowering irritably. It would be cute in a violent kind of way.

                Cold air slapped Kally’s face when she took two steps forward. The season shift outside the barrier was painful. Somewhere along this trip, she’d have to ask if they had a spare jacket or if they could stop to skin a sphinx for some fur.

                Pax retrieved the rope fabric and Axel’s jacket from the tree. While Pax was out of earshot, Axel softly said, “Once this is over, I can drive you back to your home if you hate it here. It’s dangerous on your own, and you’ll likely die, but I won’t let them force anyone to worship those gods if they don’t want to.”

                That didn’t sound like a great ultimatum, though she could imagine her priest’s suggestion on the matter of worshipping false gods vs. being killed by demons. A realization hit her. She didn’t want to be at home either. Home meant facing her mother. Not that she would be able to face her mother.

                “How’d you know...?” Though she wasn’t trying to whisper, her voice came out small.

                “I saw Apollo’s chariot descend. I know you met that arrogant coward that you have the misfortune to call your father.” Axel placed a hand on her shoulder, sending a jolt through her whole body. “Just remember, you don’t have to be like him. A building’s foundation doesn’t predestine the structure’s potential for beauty and glory, just what blocks the builder starts with.”

                She could tell he’d said this to people before. The fliers in the back of the car—the ones about uncaring gods abandoning their children, about women left as single mothers to fend off monsters. Suddenly, tears welled in her eyes.

                How dare Apollo ruin her family—not that it was perfect, but it definitely didn’t need _that_. She wanted to collapse in Axel’s arms, punching and screaming that it wasn’t fair, that he was wrong but he needed to help her smash the sun god’s pretty face in. She knew Axel would hold her. There’d be no “it’s okay” or “everything will turn out fine in the end.”

                The scenery flickered. For a moment, she feared Phobetor had them again, but this only lasted a moment.

_A scythe slipped from her fingers as she fell. The Leonis Caput caught her. He brushed the mud-splattered, black locks out of her eyes. “Life isn’t measured in fairness, but if you must read it as so, don’t dwell on its inequalities. Change them.”_

                Everything returned to normal. Mud disappeared from her hair. There was no scythe at her feet, just Axel standing beside her, awaiting her response. Pax walked back with the bundle of fabric and jacket. Neither could have seen, nor felt, what she saw. They were too calm.

                Those tears had dried up. That anger—that had been more than her own. What had just happened?

                Pax paused by her in concern. He frowned. “Do you need a cookie?” he asked.

                She shook her head quickly. “No… no…” That wrath was awful. Kally didn’t want to think about it. Something else—

“What’s so dangerous in Howe’s cavern?” she asked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

                Axel examined her intently. Once satisfied, he walked back towards the van’s driver side. “One of your father’s ancient enemies. She doesn’t like children of the light.”

                Those words made her shudder. That vision and her nightmares came together in nauseating clarity. “ _Child of Light_ …” The monster hissed in her dreams. “ _Here to reap the scythe of the lion’s labors.”_

                Whatever that monster’s end goal, she became uneasily aware they were walking towards it.

 

 

 

 

[1] As though he wanted to look casually attractive for their arrival.


	17. Calex: A Centaur’s Guide to the Creative Heimlich Maneuver

Seventeen: Calex

A Centaur’s Guide to the Creative Heimlich Maneuver

 

                They made it about twenty meters outside the barrier before getting attacked. Apparently, this wasn’t bad.

Before they left, they went through all the standard rubbish that was probably supposed to inspire confidence, but left Calex feeling grievously underprepared.

They went to a supplies shed to arm Euna and Joey. The overcrowded room reminded Calex of his father’s study, if Winston were either an idiot or a sadist, fully intent on killing the unaware that stepped in the room. Other than a small lock on the shed door, the weapons were unguarded and easily accessible. Calex frowned upon seeing the Mossberg 500 with the safety switched off, leaned against the wall, fully loaded. The pump action shotgun thrilled Joey. Had he seen her test it in the isolation of a movie screen, he’d probably find her rather fit. Up close, it made him wonder about Apollo’s decision to choose her over Percy, Nico, and Jason.

At least she turned the safety on when she was done brandishing it. That granted her some points.

He had made up his mind that he wouldn’t go on this quest. A quest that involved saving a beautiful Oracle from a dead guy sounded brilliant and all that, but he’d learned when to and not to fight fights in Kakata. He’d had the beginning of autumn term to learn to use _Soul Pain_ against monsters. Though he knew little of Joey and Euna other than the shared background of night terrors, there was no way they had enough training to be useful in a battle. They’d all be killed if they did this mission.

Plus, Joey made him a bit uncomfortable.

Once they gathered their clothing and basic bathroom amenities in backpacks, Calex gathered the courage to say he wouldn’t go. He was prepared to tell Piper he thought this was pure idiocy. He trusted her and knew she’d understand his reluctance.

Had it been Piper, he’d have told her in a heartbeat. Piper was supposed to be the counselor he talked to after he made up his mind.

When Calex saw Annabeth frowning pensively outside his cabin, he choked. Percy stood by her, continuously glancing around in agitation. They seemed in the middle of a conversation. He muttered to her, “Annabeth, remember how I had to ask you a bunch of questions about 1940s Italian culture?”

As though this was the last question she expected, Annabeth stared at Percy. “What does that have to do with whether or not we should go to New Rome this week?”

Percy froze up. He waved nervously at Jason as he rushed by. Once he was gone, Percy tugged Annabeth’s hand. “Do you know a lot about Roman culture? Or… um, wolf culture?”

She looked amused. “Did something happ—”

Calex cleared his throat as he approached. He’d been reciting how to say this in his head. He need to be careful to not insult Apollo’s judgment and not sound like a coward, even if he was scared.

When she saw him, Annabeth tossed something to Calex. He barely caught the canteen of nectar. Her gaze was critical. “I don’t approve of Apollo’s judgment on this quest. None of you have enough training.”

That might have hurt, except Calex couldn’t have agreed more. He was about to voice it, when she continued, “That being said, you can’t change fate. Rachel is a dear friend.” She touched Calex’s shoulder and a shock ran through his body. He focused on keeping on his feet, wondering if Percy would pulverize him if he accidentally fell onto his girlfriend. “Bring her back safely.”

Calex wasn’t sure which thought ran through his mind first: _I’m never washing this jacket again_ or _if it would make you happy, I do that and go to Tarturus and back_.

Which, thankfully, translated aloud as a grumbled, “Er—yes—I’ll—I’ll do everything I can.”

Which left him feeling like a prick. He really ought to have ended with the more brilliant line like, _“I’ll just piss off now_.”

After he spoke to Annabeth, he felt terrible. He couldn’t leave them now—unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life hiding in an box in an alley and hoping he’d never meet a passing monster or god that would mutter, “oh, that one? Yea, he’s the bloke who disappointed Annabeth Chase. Real shame that one is.”

They were probably going to die. He didn’t know what monster they would face to save Rachel, but Howe Cavern sounded like imposing territory for a fight. Worse—that got him wondering whether or not it mattered if he died. If Winston got the news from Kakata, he probably thought Calex was dead anyway. Either that, or Winston and Gretchen knew he ran, and would hate him forever. He could envision his little half-sister now, taking her pimsolls off in a pre-teen rage and throwing them at him.

The mental image left him hollow as Annabeth and Percy escorted him to meet Euna, Joey, and Miranda. Piper ran up to wish him off. A sob threatened to choke him, but he promised himself he wouldn’t cry again after his first breakdown—definitely not in front of Annabeth.

Piper seemed to sense his grief. She hugged him tightly, like she could squeeze the sadness out of him the way juice dripped from an orange. He wished it worked that way. He’d been able to distract himself better at Camp Half-Blood. His previous, failed responsibility came back to haunt him with the thought of this new one.

Piper slipped a few drachmas into his pocket. “Send me an Iris-message if you need anything,” she said.

“Mm?” Calex mumbled. He could hardly focus. He forced the images of Kakata out of his mind—the blood, the helplessness—he had to at least make sure Euna and Joey were safe, and save Rachel.

Miranda didn’t give her two campers quite as warm a parting as Piper did. If anything, she looked relieved.

Both the Song girls wore jeans and Camp Half-Blood orange shirts, though Joey’s was characteristically tied to expose her mid-riff. They carried packs and canteens, similar to Calex’s. Euna’s glaive tip sank into the ground as she awkwardly muttered a farewell to her cabin counselor. Joey didn’t even look at Miranda, instead staring impatiently towards the road.

Annabeth had called in a cab. She assured them, with the Mist, no one would be able to see Euna’s polearm, Joey’s shot gun, or Calex’s bow if they claimed they were other items. Despite that, Euna suggested they could pretend to be cosplayers.

They came up with a story. They were going to tell the cab driver they’d been Geocaching—where you hiked to coordinates provided online to find little boxes full of hidden treasure. They got separated from their chaperon and needed to be dropped off at the closest bus station. Calex only had a few quids in his pocket, unhelpful for any taxi exchange, but Chiron allowed them bus money from the camp’s store. With that, Calex folded down his bow, Joey disassembled her shotgun with a fluidity that he found curious, and Euna wrapped the end of her glaive, deciding to claim it was a walking staff.

That’s what the plan was before the unicorn smashed into their taxi.

 

The cabbie was parked on the side of the road that snaked past camp. The driver already looked disgruntled and confused. Calex could imagine this was outside his normal route and was likely weighing whether or not the petrol was worth it on a holiday weekend. _Strand a bunch of teenagers? Don’t strand a bunch of teenagers. Choices, choices._

He saw them and stood up to wave, as though he feared they’d overlook the yellow cab in all the autumn foliage.

A red blur erupted from the forest. At first, Calex thought it might be Ella, the harpy, but this proved to be _much_ bigger.

Joey shouted, “Move!” at the driver.

He turned in enough time to hear the _crunch_ of metal on whatever hit the taxi. The impact knocked the vehicle a meter back, shattering the driver’s side windows and sending a rainbow splay of sparks all over the driver. He promptly soiled his trousers and ran for the woods.

From the wrecked metal, an enormous stallion staggered. Its ebony mane rippled as it shook its head. The fur was a similar deep crimson to Calex’s favorite team, but peppered with either black spots or dirt. Although the shade made it difficult to tell, Calex thought there was blood coagulating on its back.

A spiraling silver and gold horn stuck out its forehead. Rainbow sparks continued to intermittedly spit like a leprechaun’s fountain about to explode. The horn was broken and Calex had to wonder if unicorn horns could short circuit.

The unicorn squealed, a horrific noise Calex didn’t know horses made. The unicorn clopped backwards, away from the taxi and took a few steps closer to them.

Delirious howls, like the hiccupped call of a coyote pack, echoed through the woods. Rustling followed. Three centaurs burst from the trees, hooting madly. They didn’t share Chiron’s sophisticated demeanor, instead having a feral, frantic nervousness. Their lower halves were that of brown horses. Their human halves were tan with leather armor and animal hides. Each had a different weapon: one a bow, one a club, and one a blood-streaked spear. Bull horns sprouted from their foreheads. From the way they stumbled and bumped into one another, Calex could tell they had had a little too much to drink from the adult horsie trough.

The one with the spear caught sight of them. “Half-bloods!” he cheered.

The other two raised their club and bow. “Half-bloods!” they repeated.

They began to gallop in a sloppy circle around the three of them and the unicorn. Calex remembered mention of Chiron’s crazy cousins. They had sounded harmless. The one with the bow notched an arrow, getting ready to aim.

These were not harmless.

The unicorn clopped backwards towards the three of them. Calex didn’t know which way he wanted to run: into a startled animal ready to kick or into the frat boys of the mythological world. He hoped they were close enough to Camp Half-Blood that someone could hear or see this and come help.

“That one is pretty,” the one with the spear exclaimed, eyeing them.

“Ew!” Joey said.

Not liking that the centaur fancied one of them, she withdrew her shotgun case. Calex scrambled to reassemble his bow, trying to focus on that instead of the dizzying encirclement. He felt like they were in the middle of a carousel; well, if the carousel were more like a biker motorcade instead of pink and glittery lazy river.

The centaur with the bow shot Joey’s shotgun case from her hands.

The one with a club broke circle and cantered toward them. Calex didn’t have his bow strung. Euna was the only one ready for the charge. She had unwrapped the end of her glaive. Without hesitation, she planted her feet firmly in front of him and Joey and jabbed the shaft toward the centaur, bracing for impact.

This centaur had no armor on its underbelly where she aimed. Realizing her weapon outdistanced his, the centaur veered to the side to avoid her strike.

Another squeal came from the unicorn. Calex turned to see, but was swept off his feet before he could help. For a moment, all he could see or smell was a muddy, reeking horse back. The centaur with the spear had trotted past, picked up Calex around the waist, and hefted him over one shoulder. To his disgust, Calex’s black muffler dipped and flicked into the mud as the arrows in his quiver tipped out, over his shoulder and scattered onto the ground. The stench of the centaur’s shampoo, _Neverwash,_ hit him hard. “I got him!” the centaur called gleefully.

_Oh gods!_ Calex thought, **_I’m_ **_the one he said was pretty. I’m about to be kidnapped by a centaur!_

                “Calex!” Euna shouted helpfully.

                Calex thrashed and squirmed, horrified to find the centaur was stronger than he, something he was _not_ accustomed to. Calex punched the leather armor across the centaur’s back, trying to find a gap. When the centaur resumed encircling Euna, Joey, and the unicorn, he had another horrifying realization: if they kept circling, he’d have to add vomit to the list of disgusting things coating the centaur’s back.

                “Forget the unicorn! We have a pretty half-blood!” his centaur decided after one nauseating go-around.

                “Pretty half-blood!” the others chorused.

If he hadn’t already thought he was about to throw up, he certainly wanted to at those words.

                “ _Excuse_ me?!” Joey snarled. “You better not run away! There is still another _attractive_ half-blood in this group!” Calex couldn’t tell if she was trying to stall them or if her vanity had simply been violated.

                “He’s not wearing a helmet!” Euna screamed.

                At first, Calex wanted to shout back that he hadn’t _planned_ on horse-shoulder riding today, so he couldn’t have planned for a helmet. Then he realized what she meant. In a panic, Calex drove his elbow backwards as hard as he could, connecting it with the centaur’s head.

                He mentally listed some famous people that had died or been permanently injured by falling off a horse: Christopher Reeves, Genghis Khan, William the Conqueror, and—upcoming—Calex Rupin McKenzie. Except he wasn’t famous for being a conqueror or Superman.

                Calex vaguely remembered someone telling him you were supposed to tuck and roll, but he was too busy thinking about how he was going to break his hip bone from the angle of his descent—or get crushed by the next centaur in line.

                Someone smashed into his waist.

                Euna had dropped her glaive to dive into him. The tackle _hurt_. She slammed into his torso, forcing his inertia from a downward drop of death into a spinning roll to the side. They just missed the centaur’s back hooves as they tumbled over one another into the foliage.

                While shocked to be alive, Calex was sure the state of being would be—well—short lived. He waited for the second centaur in line to club them or trample them. Instead, he found a surprising reason to fancy Joey Song.

                She stood in front of Calex and Euna, bare-handed except for the shotgun case. She hadn’t had the time to assemble the weapon. When the centaur went to club her, she jumped at him. With one hand, she shoved the case into his club. With the other hand, she punched him in the throat.

                When the centaur gagged and started to go down, she twisted to avoid getting trampled.

                Her dodge wasn’t going to be enough.

                “Joey!” Euna shouted. One of her hands shot out. Like an extension of her grasp, a root shot out of the ground to snag Joey’s arm to drag her out of eminent-horse-collision-zone. The equestrian went down, narrowly missing her. Joey yelped while flopping down beside the now inanimate tree root.

                Upon contact with the ground, the centaur disintegrated. Calex gawked; Joey must have crushed its windpipe.

                Calex wanted to shout in glee, but the centaur with a spear was doubling back and the centaur with the bow was thundering towards them. He, Joey, and Euna were too open and vulnerable. None of them had their weapons. Joey’s shotgun case was in pieces from absorbing the club blow, Euna’s glaive was close but not close enough to grab against Mr. Sagittarius, and Calex’s arrows and golden bow pieces were scattered in the autumn leaves.

                A scream made Calex want to cover his ears.

                At first, he thought one of the girls made it. Then the unicorn galloped up alongside Mr. Sagittarius. Horror warped the centaur’s face. He had clearly been expecting the unicorn’s battle cry as much as Calex had. The unicorn dropped its head, snapping its jaws around Mr. Sagittarius’s front leg.

                Mr. Sagittarius fell. Had the centaur not dusted after his first roll, the unicorn might have gone for the face next.

                With his friends gone, the last centaur fumbled to stop his charge. The unicorn dashed at him, rearing to kick, and snapping its teeth.

                The centaur bolted back into the woods, tail hung low in defeat, shouting, “He wasn’t _that_ pretty anyway!”

                The unicorn stopped charging once the centaur left. It made a noise that Calex assumed was rude in horse talk.

                It took him a moment to process what just happened. _A unicorn just killed one centaur and scared off the other._ So unicorns were fierce, but… preferred backup when battling.

                “That…” Calex said, glancing back and forth between Joey and Euna, “was brilliant! You…”

                Euna still breathed heavily. She had scrambled to grab her glaive and stayed crouched. Once she was certain the centaur wasn’t returning, her shoulders slummed and she trembled. “Mm?” she asked, appearing quite rattled.

                “You—you saved me,” he said. “And you—” He looked at Joey. She was nonchalantly searching for the pieces of her shotgun case. “—you punched a centaur in the neck!”

                “My form was awful,” Joey muttered irritably.

                Euna glared at her. “And you didn’t have an escape plan? Were you planning on being run over?”

                If the rest of the journey was going to be like this, Calex figured he’d need to learn how to distract them in the fewest number of words possible.

                “Where did you two learn?” Calex asked. Not the best distraction, but he was genuinely curious. He rose to gather his arrows, bow pieces, and help Joey seek out her disassembled shotgun.

                The unicorn trotted over curiously.

                Once it didn’t try to kill them, Calex assumed it would wander off. Instead, the unicorn followed them as they searched about. Rainbow sparks would splatter into their faces as it lowered its nose to blow at their heads. The sparks felt fantastic. Calex’s entire side felt sore from Euna smashing into him, but the pain eased when the unicorn got close.

                “Lessons,” Euna explained like _How to Kill a Centaur in Three Steps or Less_ was taught anywhere other than Camp Half-Blood. With the species of their activities director, he doubted it even at camp.

                “Dad,” Joey spat with distaste, “likes to pretend we’re boys in his home country. I keep telling him. We’re not boys. We’re not going to be drafted into the army in a few years to do basic training! I have missed a lot of dance practices because of those stupid survival schools, boot camps, and mixed martial arts lessons.”   

                Euna snorted.

                Joey put a hand on her hip and flicked her opposite one in the air. “Oh, and Euna missed a lot of time to sulk in her room.”

                “An idiot could see those classes had something to do with this,” Euna said, gesturing to the unicorn. It was trying to nibble at Joey’s hair. Joey warily ducked away.

                He was not about to let them start fighting again. Calex stood up straight to tower over them. “’Ey! We’ve probably got about ten hours left to save Rachel Dare or else we’re going to disappoint the Camp—“ especially Annabeth “—and our cabbie is a shambles.”[1] Calex paused. He didn’t want to suggest they go back and call for another. He’d had enough difficulty leaving the first time and it would be utterly embarrassing if he had to drag himself back and ask to borrow Annabeth’s mobile for another ride. “We need to find another way to get to Howe Cavern.”

                At the name of the location, the unicorn shook its black mane. It trotted up alongside Calex and nickered. Then it lowered itself onto one knee in a way that made Calex think, _Absolutely not_.

                The unicorn’s visible eye scowled intently at him.

                Euna cracked a smile despite the mention of their time table. “I think it wants to take us there.”

                “I don’t think a horse would be fast enough,” Calex said.

                If he hadn’t dodged to the side, the unicorn would have bitten his ear clean off. It snorted at him in offense.

                “Unicorn,” he corrected. “Sorry. I just don’t see how you could carry the three of us—”

                The unicorn neighed with a tone that Calex recognized as threatening.

                _I’m arguing with a horse that has a bone deformity_ , he reminded himself.

                In the letters he’d received over summer, he vaguely recalled something about mythological animals being able to travel faster than expected. While he debated on whether or not he’d want to gamble on it and whether or not the unicorn would actually know the way, Joey approached their potential ride.

                “Hey,” she batted her lashes at the unicorn like she was asking it on a date. Within Greek mythology—Calex speculated—that wouldn’t have been that weird. “Can my sister and I ride you to Howe Caverns?”

                The unicorn huffed and stayed on one knee.

                “Calex,” she turned the sweet look on him. “You wanna boost me up before more centaurs show up to hunt this… guy?” She ended uncertainly, glancing at the unicorn for an answer.

                It neighed in affirmation.

                “And you, apparently,” she added.

                Despite Euna’s normal reaction to her sister, she covered up a smile.

                Calex didn’t realize Joey’s request was a ploy until he uncomfortably lifted her onto the unicorn’s back. Joey must have jumped somewhere at least close to the height he lifted her in order to punch the centaur earlier. He’d have to ask her how she did that later, but for now he was annoyed—she’d only ask so he’d have to touch her. The giddy smile on her face proved it.

                Once she was comfortable and the unicorn didn’t buck her off, he sighed and turned to Euna. “Do you need a boost?”

                “Mm—? Oh!” Euna look startled. He had a feeling that was her equivalent to a blush. She stepped over and examined the ground. He was trying to figure out how to make her feel less embarrassed when Euna lifted half a foot into the air.

                He yelped. Last he’d heard, children of Demeter couldn’t fly. One look down proved they couldn’t.

                A tree root had popped out of the ground to raise her high enough for the stallion’s back. She hopped on and offered him a hand.

                Calex glanced at the unicorn. There was—shockingly—enough room for him, but the three of them would weigh ton. “You sure about this, mate?”

                The unicorn huffed in a way that sounded like, _Get on or die._

                He took Euna’s hand and hopped on behind them, shocked they all fit. Memories of his nausea on the centaur’s shoulder made him regret the decision. “Uh…. Unicorn—”

                “Call him Vinyl Scratch,” Joey supplied.

                “Right…” Calex muttered skeptically. “On to saving the Oracle… Could we take it slow at first—I’ve never… not had a saddle.”

                _Or ridden a unicorn in general_ , he added mentally. In the movies, the heroine always placed her hands around the rider’s waist. He frowned at Euna’s back, trying to guess at how to do this without making her uncomfortable.

                He could have sworn the unicorn _laughed_ with the next knicker.

                When Vinyl Scratch surged forward, the image of the autumn trees bent into a smear of fire. Calex shouted and wrapped his arms around Euna tightly. Rainbow sparks spattered from the horn to the ground in a prismatic path. Assuming the G-force didn’t kill them, Calex suspected they would be in Howe Cavern in an array of prideful glory within the next hour.

 

 

 

[1] As this cab driver confirms Kally’s prior wonder: minotaur and unicorn collisions are not covered by insurance.

* * *

Author's Note: This is as far as I've gotten on the editing so far guys! And I split up a lot of the chapters, so there is a HUGE jump in plot to the next section (I think you're missing like... 5 chapters worth...?) I promise to fill that in by the end of this week, but I wanted to warn anyone new who might be reading through! Thank you so much for reading :D I hope you've enjoyed it so far and will continue to enjoy it once I fix up the rest of the story!


	18. Kalypso: I Get the Worst Pep Talk Ever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kally is scared of telling the others about her vision, but--if they're going to fight together--she needs answers and advice. Finally, she finds the courage to ask the Pax boys who they are and what is really going on.

 

 

The van was _clean_. Kally wondered what made Axel do it. Grover had already taken out most of the trash with his mouth dumpster, but a refreshing blast of citrus hit her when she stepped into the back. Maybe Axel really had sanitized the interior with a few hundred gallons of Febreze.

                The helmets and fliers were still safely tucked in the trunk. All the weapons were back on their wall hooks and posts. She took a seat on the cushion that Grover hadn’t managed to ingest as anti-anxiety medication. Once she set her messenger bag to the side, an uneasy sense of vertigo hit her. At first, she was scared the world would fade into another vision.

                No visions came. The back of the van had so much sunlight spilling through the windows, she knew it couldn’t be one of her waking nightmares.

Now that it was daylight, she could see the beauty of Long Island as Axel drove down the country roads. Despite the view, Kally felt sick and helpless.

                Maybe this was what fate felt like: a scary sense of drowning in one's own inability to choose, like she’d become the editor of her own story and not the author.[1] Kally thought about the Calvinists she'd learned about in her history class and the predestination arguments she'd had with her priest.

                Was her mom supposed to cheat on her father for the sake of... some stupid prophecy or quest? The nausea made her clutch her stomach. Kalypso Cassand, with her supposed half-blood powers, could only exist if her mother had taken interest in a spastic sun god. She hoped it wouldn't work if she tried to heal someone or prophesize or—

                When the music came on, it made Kally jump. The beginning of the drive had been quiet. Neither Pax nor Axel wanted to talk. She examined the slit of Axel's face in the rearview mirror. Once again, she wondered where those thin scars came from. They were too neatly separated and... stylistic for an accident.

                His dark eyes were grim with exhaustion. She suddenly wanted to tell Pax to take his brother's cheeks and push them up into a smile, then back into a frown, just to see some emotion other than _I'm serious and mysterious_. She was pretty sure that Pax would do it, though it would likely turn into a secondary experiment: how quickly can Axel throw Pax out a window.[2]

                When Axel checked his rearview mirror and saw her staring, he raised his eyebrows. Kally blushed, but tried not to look away. Merry often told her she needed to stop doing that, then would demand they have a staring contest that would last more than two seconds.

                Axel rolled his window down a crack, checked his pockets, his cup holder, and the sun visor compartment, then sighed in annoyance. Pax handed him a stick of gum.

                Without warning, a fight broke out between the brothers. Axel shoved Pax and gestured to the back of the van, saying something in... some other language. Pax jerked away, like he was offended. From the silhouette of his face, Kally could see he was pouting.

                "What?! No! You're better at that!" Pax complained.

                Axel glared at his brother and snapped a response in the other language.

                Whatever Pax said next was the final straw.

                A terrifying rage blazed in Axel's eyes. Kally decided she liked mysterious and serious much more and contemplated praying to whatever god could turn back time so she could unwish seeing emotion on Axel's face. 

                His hand darted at Pax faster than a Goth kid could sprint from a One Direction concert. He grabbed Pax by the ear.

                Hunnie and Baller squeaked. Like an exodus from a major disaster, the two weasels raced from Pax's jacket, flooded over the arm rests, and dashed into the back of the van. Upon finding a lack of trash to dive into, they went in panicked circles. Kally went to grab her messenger bag from the floor, but was too slow.

                Baller, the one she decided was the darker of the two, saw his opening and wiggled inside to befriend the Argonaut statue. Hunnie followed close after. Kally decided she’d rather not touch her bag anymore.

                " _Ay! Ay! Ay!_ " Pax whined as Axel dragged him from his seat and onto the armrest. Because of how Pax clung to Axel's forearm, it looked more like Axel was picking him up. "Ares is a better fighter than you and Zeus is a better leader!" Pax snapped defiantly.

                "Axel!" Kally cried. She was scared they were going to crash and that Axel was actually going to throw Pax out a window.

                Instead, Axel calmly tugged Pax onto the armrest then shoved him into the back.

                Pax smacked onto the floor at her feet. From where his ear peeked out of his black hair, she could see it was bright red. _At least it is still attached and not the weasel's newest delicacy: filet oreille._

                Pax sat up and scowled at the back of Axel's head. To her relief and mild horror, he didn't retaliate against the driver, but sulked into the seat beside her.

                She resisted the urge to ask what that was about, very aware they were speaking in a different language for a reason. Rude. But she didn't think now was the time to point that out.

                Pax radiated irritation. He slumped back and crossed his arms.

                "What language were you speaking?' she blurted out instead. The subject needed changing and that was the first thing that came to mind.

                "Kriol," Pax muttered. He glared at the rearview mirror, where Axel pointedly ignored them.

                "Like Louisiana?" she pressed. They didn't look French. She felt stupid as soon as the words left her mouth.

                He sighed. The tension eased from his shoulders and he seemed to melt into the cushion. "Belize."

                "Oh..." That country she'd definitely heard about.... somewhere. Maybe. Ex-Soviet? By the Balkans? No... that was Bulgaria.

                "It shares a border with Mexico," Pax explained routinely. Although his voice hadn't recovered its normal buoyancy, she could hear a hint, like he was on the brink of realizing he could tease her.

                She was used to people not knowing where her home town was, but a full country..?

                "How would you feel if you found out your dad wasn't your dad?" she asked.

                The question surprised her as much as it surprised Pax. Though she knew she'd whispered it, the words felt foreign. That familiar lack of control made her cringe. She hadn't meant to say that out loud yet and she definitely hadn’t meant to say it to Pax.

                "Relieved," he said. The response was reflexively. He opened his mouth like he wanted to amend it, then looked away.

                "I'm sorry," she mumbled. She wanted to give him a hug, though she couldn't tell if it was more for her or for him. Although Kally's instincts told her the safest route was to shut up, she whispered, "How did you react when you found out all your siblings were half-siblings?" 

                He shrugged, watching Hunnie and Baller make Kally's messenger bag pulsate like it was sentient. She could envision her little Argonaut statue reaching for help. _Get me away from these overgrown rats!_

"I've always known,” Pax said. “Axel's mom took care of us for a long time... Hiro... our little brother, we once met his mom, I think."

                In the rearview mirror, Kally saw Axel’s eyes crinkled in what she assumed was a sad smile. Like they hadn’t previously argued, Axel confirmed, “We did. She made amazing soba. When you were little and first tried it, you told Ms. Iwakura you could show her how to use a microwave properly to heat up the noodles. Kouta and I smacked you good for that one.”

                _Axel's mother, Hiro's mother, Pax's mother:_ the words didn't make sense. Like someone had ripped up a story book, tossed it into a puzzle box, and dumped the pieces in front of her, Kally felt more confused than she had before. _Axel’s mom_ ** _took_** _care of us. Hiro’s mom_ ** _made_** _amazing soba._ All said casually in the past tense.

                "We should play a game to pass the time," Pax suggested, interrupting her thoughts. “We could go on opposite sides of the van and roll Hunnie and Baller into each other. Have them fight to the death.”

                Kally wanted to ask more questions, but couldn’t even formulate the questions to ask. When she registered what he said, she paused. “What?”

                Pax gave her a moon-slit grin. “You’re right—that would go by WAY too fast. Maybe until first blood?” He waved his hand casually and reached for the trunk. “We can play cards until we’re closer to the caverns. It’ll let the weasel rage rise. Besides, Alabaster gave me this really cool deck that’s got special illusion spells on each card. They’re supposed to prevent people from cheating…” 

                “Did you cheat that often?” Kally asked, watching Pax pull out a stack of fliers.

                “I was never caught cheating,” he stated, like it directly answered her question.

                He set the feline and serpentine helmets on the floor. Seeing the _Leonis Caput_ made Kally tremble. That invasive rage crept along her lungs, threatening to squeeze them into a panic. She didn’t want to talk about it, but she needed answers about _something_ and now might be her only chance before getting eaten by the monster in Howe Cavern.

Every time Axel and Pax talked about their past, it seemed more convoluted. Her mother—thank God—er—was it gods now?—wasn’t around to ask about Apollo and Kally wasn’t even sure she could ask if her mom had been around. If Kally was going to fight some ancient enemy of Apollo’s with a taste for sun babies purely because she wanted out of a camp for mythological half-breeds, didn’t want to confront her mother, and was too scared to walk off on her own, she at least wanted to know if there would be more visits from the pleasant Vision Fairy. Timidly, she squeaked out, "I saw something."

                Had Axel not seen her mouth move in the mirror, she imagined he wouldn't have heard her and she could pretend the sound came from Hunnie or Baller in her bag.

                "Oh!" Pax cheered. He glanced away from the trunk. "I like this game. Was it something red? Or dark-haired and handsome?"

                "No—" Well, the plumes on the Leonis Caput helmet were red, but that was beside the point. Her timidity lost to frustration.

She described the vision of the scythe, the horrifying, wrathful version of her with black hair, the Leonis Caput worn by... she hadn't seen his face, but the voice had been male, far deeper than any of theirs. Then, more hesitantly, she told them about her nightmares, the coils of darkness and its hiss about " _the Child of Light... Here to reap the scythe of the lion’s labors.”_ She hadn't even told Merry about her nightmares, but the words felt lighter as they left her mouth.

                The silence that ensued scared her more than any explanation could have. From the way Axel's eyes widened and Pax stared, she knew it wasn't because they didn't have any ideas. She'd been hoping Axel would have waved the story off with a, _"Oh, the Leonis Caput? Yea, he's such a joker like that._ "

                Instead, Axel said, "As a demigod and as a daughter of the God of Prophecy, you're going to be more prone to seeing clips of the future, past... or the present." _The present?_ He said it like the helmet wasn’t in the trunk and could be in some weird abyss. Then again, she'd been gone for a day. Maybe Hunnie and Baller had moved it or a harpy had flown off with it temporarily. It would be about as logical as the rest of the world _. Harpies: the seagulls of the Greek world._

                She wanted to ask, _Any other cheerful news?_ but was out of courage. 

                Pax seemed to sense her hesitancy. He placed a hand over hers. In Pax land, hand holding must not have been a breach in social protocol or fall under _how-to-make-people-uncomfortable_ , because he didn’t even blink at her blush. “It probably was a vision about someone else. And if it was a vision about you, don’t worry. You’d look just as cute with black hair and a psychopathic scythe.”

                Kally withdrew her hand. It tingled. There was a high chance Pax had held her hand or wrist more in the last 48 hours than her mother had during her entire childhood. “You’re not very good at this comforting thing,” she said.

                “Nope!” Pax agreed cheerfully. He leaned forward to scowl at the rearview mirror. “Someone else is _much better at that_ …” Once he was sure Axel had ignored him with more enthusiasm than a vegetarian at a Brazilian Steakhouse, he leaned back. “I get it from my mother.”

                So he definitely _did_ know which goddess was his mother. She was scared the brothers would sink back into their nostalgic melancholy if she asked the identity, but the answer mattered beyond mere curiosity. From what she understood, a half-blood’s powers depended on their godly parentage. From what she remembered she hadn’t seen Axel or Pax use any powers—other than the magical apples Pax kept in his jacket. Hecate, maybe? Their camp counselor had certainly used magic when she fought the counselor of Cabin Four. If Axel had a different mother… he was a better fighter than she’d ever seen, not that she’d seen many fights outside of movies. Wasn’t Athena the Greek goddess of warfare..?

                “Why didn’t you tell anyone at camp who your mother is? They were all asking if you’ve been claimed,” she said.

                Pax smirked and put his hands behind his head. “They were, though they never directly asked who my mother is. Getting claimed is when you have that hologram thing sprout over your head like a disco ball—courtesy of Greek ancenstry.com.  I’ve never had the glowy hologram thing.”

                “I’m asking you now, directly: who is your mother?” Kally thought she might have Pax’s line of questioning figured out.

                Of course, she was wrong.

                “I’ll tell you all about our family once you swear on the River Styx you won’t share our secrets.” If possible, his grin widened.

                Axel coughed back a laugh from the front.

                That still sounded like a terrible idea, one she figured neither would explain until after she’d made the mistake. Kally sighed. “You’re really frustrating.”

                “I get that from both sides of the family,” Pax stated. He snagged some cards from the trunk, flicked them out, and started to shuffle. “Poker, Blackjack, or Go Fish? If I were—say—someone who was prone to cheating, then the enchantment would work in your favor with any of them.”

                Kally thought about cheating in Go Fish and rolled her eyes. “Assuming you’re not lying about the cards.”

                “You’re wising up Cyclopes.”

                She glanced out the back window. They had passed through the beautiful forests by Camp Half-Blood and were getting closer to the heart of New York. “We’ve got a lot of time to kill,” she said, “Let’s play War.”

 

 

 

 

[1] And as you may have noticed from the number of mistakes, this author hates editing his/her own story.

[2] Pax would like to say 3.5 seconds if he’s wearing a seatbelt. And he would also like to say you should always buckle up, since you never know when Axel might try to throw you out a car window.


	19. Calex: And Then We Rode a Unicorn Over a Rainbow (or: Robot Unicorn Attack)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kally's team and Calex's team cross paths and Calex starts to realize that there is something very wrong with Axel Pax.

 

 

            Calex only threw up three times. He’d never been motion sick before. Cars, airplanes—Hades, even the thirty year old pickup truck their neighbor drove over the unpaved roads of Kakata never made him sick.

            This was a first he could have lived without. Apparently his stomach didn’t agree with mythological travel.

            Whether fortunate or not, Vinyl would stop to graze every fifty miles or so. This gave Calex ample opportunity to decorate the ground with some pavement pizza. Neither Joey nor Euna had any nausea problems, though Joey did complain that her bum was going to rattle off. 

None of them had been to Howe Caverns before.  They hoped this was the proper direction. They were going in without a plan, without knowledge of whom or what they would fight—other than possibly a dead guy named Octavian—and, apparently, only partially armed.

            The second time they stopped, when Euna and Joey were pointedly pretending Calex wasn’t getting sick, Joey cried in alarm.

            At first, Calex thought she might have a tablet sized spider on her head. Instead, he found her cleaning the Mossberg 500, frantically moving the parts around.

            “What’s wrong?” Euna asked. She’d been searching for any stores nearby that might have food or plants she could harvest. With her sister’s cry, she’d raced back.

            “The firing pin is gone!” Joey cried.

            Had Calex not been so intimate with the ground, he might have tried to comfort her. As it was, the most helpful comment he could make sounded like, “HUUULL.”

            They looked for the firing pin for five minutes before Vinyl decided it was time to go.

            By the time they reached Howe Caverns, the sun had reached its apex and stared its descent. None of them had a mobile to check the time, but he guessed they had at least eight hours left to save the Oracle.

            The mountains they’d raced over would have been beautiful if not for the sickness and rainbow-powered-unicorn-speed. He was thankful they arrived; he wouldn’t be able to pull himself together enough for another ride.

 Vinyl slammed to a halt at the base of a small hill, directly in front of a motorcar.

Calex couldn’t care less at the time. He heard the scream of breaks and saw the front of a van skid to a stop a meter away. That didn’t matter. If he could shout, he would have said, “ _Yea, we’ve got a unicorn. Now sod off!”_

            Instead, Calex collapsed off the side, knowing he had nothing left in his stomach, but figuring a few more dry heaves couldn’t hurt anything but his pride. Like last time, Euna hopped off and set the canister of nectar in front of him. Once he could manage a swig, the liquid would settle his stomach.

            A road, maybe a quarter kilometer long, wound up the side of the hill. At the top nestled a small estate. The white walls were separated with brown panels into neat rectangles, reminding him, bizarrely, of a trip he took to Holland as a child. The brown roof was narrow, designed to withstand snow. In loud, capital letters, the words HOWE CAVERNS popped out of the hill in white stone.

            The vehicle they’d stopped in front of honked once. He knew the van wouldn’t disappear when he choked down a swig of nectar, but he couldn’t help hoping.

            “Excuse me ladies and gent! This is a no-unicorn crossing zone. Please direct your unicorn to a proper horned equestrian walkway!”

            The voice sounded familiar, though Calex had met too many people over the last few days to place from where. The Mist should have made the human see a horse or a lost moose.

            A fifteen-year-old Hispanic kid leaned out the passenger window. He grinned, mimicking Connor Stoll’s favorite greeting for Calex, “’Ello Gov’ner!”

            The undetermined new camper. Apparently Percy’s prediction had come true: Ajax Pax had followed them here in the Mist coated van.

            Joey hopped off Vinyl. The unicorn shook out its mane and wandered into the grass. Joey put her hands on her hips. “You!” she snapped accusingly at the boy. “This is our mission! Get lost.”

            Pax rested his elbow on the window ledge and his head on his hand. “Excuse me Princess of the Crops, but I believe Phobetor gave me this mission first—”

            “Along with all of our nightmares,” Joey interrupted.

            “—and you wouldn’t even know Rachel is in the cavern if I hadn’t told you.”

            “Yea, you served your usefulness.” She flicked her fingers at him in a shooing motion. “Scram.”

            That struck a nerve. Pax’s eyes narrowed and he went to open the car door.

            The driver grabbed him by his collar and shoved Pax back into the passenger seat. The guy with bronze skin and a goatee leaned out his window. “Olympus is big enough for the egos of a dozen gods; my van is big enough for three more demigods. If you get in the back, I’ll drive you to the top.”

            He revved his engine.

            The engine said, _if you stay, I’ll make a road mosaic with your bones._

            Although Calex would never admit to it, his legs felt rubbery. He didn’t fancy a walk up the hill. Movement in general didn’t sound brilliant, but that felt the lesser of two evils. “Alright mate,” he said. “That’s not a bad idea.”

            Euna was relieved at his agreement, but hesitated. “Are you the guy they were talking about at camp... the one who took out all the children of Ares?”

             “The name is Axel Pax,” he said with a bow of the head and a raise of a hand: the most formal gesture manageable while driving that pile of metal rubbish. “However, I had help taking out the children of the war god.”

            “I took out one person!” Pax piped up. He frowned and counted on his fingers. “Well, two Greeks if you include Kally—”

            “I’m still mad at you for that!” a feminine voice snapped from the interior.

            Joey snorted. “The Apollo girl? I bet you have the Dionysus daughter too. How many half-bloods did you think you’d need to take out one ghost?”

            “The number we _have_ is enough to make this van look like an ice cream truck to monsters,” Pax informed her. “Let’s at least make sure we’re selling at the top of the hill before they get here.” 

            This was enough to convince the Song sisters. Though Joey grumbled, she followed Euna towards the back. Axel examined Calex and Calex got the distinct feeling that the older boy was debating if it would be easier to run him over.

            “Uh—could you hold on a tick?” Calex asked and walked towards the grass. 

            Calex wasn’t sure how to sort out Vinyl Scratch—if that was what they were going to call him. Before they hopped into the van—which looked like something out of a shoddy horror movie—he wanted to thank the unicorn. They might have helped save him from centaurs. Sort of. The unicorn did more of the saving than they had. Any who, this lift was more than due payment for half saving his life.

            Once he got close enough, the sparks from the broken horn tingled against Calex’s arms and face. Reflexively, he flinched away. However, for each flash of light that made contact, his stomach felt considerably more fit to remain in his torso. 

            “How about I get you something from the gift shop, hm?” Calex offered. “If you decide to stick it out, of course.”

            Vinyl huffed at him.

            Calex huffed back.

            He and Tom used to play this game. They joked about how important eye contact was for emphasizing your strength, your resolve, and your threat, especially when staring down an animal: a crazed human or a wild beast. The best way to gain respect. The best way to tell someone to lower their weapon when they’re not sure if they want to shoot you.

            _Resolve. Respect… Tom... Mum…_

            His eyes felt warm. Calex coughed. He would have none of that, not now. They had a mission to do. He had to keep moving.

            Vinyl shook out his mane and stepped away.

            When Calex walked back, the sense of being watched made him glance around to see if Vinyl was going to charge him. Instead, he found Axel’s unwavering gaze from the driver’s seat. Although Axel occasionally made comments to the others in the back, his attention was clear. Over the last two days, Calex had tried to silence the powers of Eros. Now, he extended his senses.

            _Euna’s fear. Joey’s indignation. Pax’s excitement. Kally’s intimidation. Axel’s…_

            Nothing. Hollow like his eyes.

            There were three others though. He couldn’t see them, but he could _feel_ them. They must have been human-ish since he couldn’t feel out Vinyl’s emotions. As he approached the van, the vibe became more resonant.

            Inside, there were weapons all over the walls. Cards were scattered on the ground. The Song sisters sat on one side of the van. Kally sat opposite. Pax had moved to lounge on top of a seat jutting out from behind the passenger’s. The Song sisters stared at the cards.

            They were holographic—or he guessed that’s what it was. Whenever a card laid face up, a miniature figure popped up. From a few various ones scattered in their entry, he could see the numbered cards were foot soldiers from various periods. No. Not various. The diamond suit foot soldiers had khopeshes and wore kilts; the spades, hoplite swords and bronze breast plates; the clubs, battle axes and furs; and the hearts held wooden swords with little rocks embedded in the side and had feathered headdresses.

            Kally had a stack of cards in her hand, but the last one she’d played had been an Ace of Spades: a chimera, something Calex wouldn’t have picked to illustrate his ace.

            Pax appeared to be out of cards. The last one he’d played cycled from one image to the next—first a weird canine animal with a curved snout, then a pregnant mare, then a dancing coyote with human hands and feet, and—finally—Hermes playing a lyre.

            Calex was disappointed the Indian girl wasn’t with them. He had enjoyed her buoyant nonchalance. Her absence and the cards were distracting, but he couldn’t ignore the violent scream of emotion coming from Pax’s seat.

            Three presences or _somethings_ were inside the floor somewhere. One felt cramped up and ashamed. The two others—

            Calex caught himself on the wall of the van, almost smashing his fist into a metal bola ball.

            The other two shrieked of malice.

            Calex tried to shut off his senses before they were overloaded. Before, the gift of Eros had faded gradually. Now, he wanted to dull it immediately. No one noticed how he gritted his teeth except Kally.

            “Are you okay?” she asked, her concern overcoming her timid nature.

            “I’m alright,” he assured, sinking onto the cushion beside her.

            Euna shut the doors after him. As Axel started up the hill, Pax went to pack up the cards. Calex gestured at his seat. “Have you got any secret compartments there?”

            Pax grinned. “There are secret compartments all over the van. The question is whether or not Axel and I know all of them.”

            Joey went to pull a quiver off the wall. Pax _meeped_ and dashed to snatch it from her hands. “Are you crazy!?” he snapped. “There are cursed items in this van! This could have made you turn into a newt—or gods forbid!—a walnut!”

            Euna, Joey, and Calex all leaned closer to the center of the van, away from the items on the walls. Calex couldn’t keep his eyes off the source of that feeling of hatred. Although the space wasn’t big enough for a person, let alone three people, he wondered what could be in there and if Axel and Pax actually didn’t know about it.

            After a moment of silence, Euna piped up, “You have enough weapons in here and…” She looked at the bin full of broken weapons. “Pieces of weapons to arm a dozen people. What were you expecting to fight?”

            Pax sat back down on the seat that resonated evil and the happy thoughts of a serial killer. He looked right at home as he raised an eyebrow and leaned back. “You guys just found out you’re half-bloods, didn’t you? That’s so cute that you have to ask that question. Don’t worry. You’ll almost be killed often enough to understand.”

            That brought on another cheerful silence.

            Calex didn’t feel like talking. After Euna and Joey fought the centaurs, he felt more comfortable traveling with them. Still, he didn’t know these people and he definitely didn’t trust Axel or Pax. Kally seemed too quiet to do much in a fight. A shudder ran through him. _I don’t know this country, let alone these people._

            Axel pulled into the car park, behind the estate. An off-roader and two hatchbacks were off in the corner. Calex could imagine October would be an off season for a tourist spot, but he thought this was a holiday weekend. The lack of visitors was uncanny.

            Axel hopped out.

            “How was the trip?” Euna asked him when he opened the door.

            Everyone glanced over at her. She looked between Axel, Pax, and Kally.

            Axel offered her his hand to help her down. A smile touched his lips. “The lack of monsters was a little alarming—”

            “Since a _lack_ of them is scary,” Pax muttered.

            “Other than that, the roads were a little bumpy,” Axel said, ignoring Pax. Euna hopped out.

            “We wouldn’t know. We rode the whole way on a unicorn,” Joey bragged as she jumped out after.

            The conversation felt surreal. Not because of the unicorn, but because—despite the unicorn—it felt too normal. Like asking about a bus ride. Calex sighed as he disembarked. “When we recount this to Annabeth later, can we leave out the bit about riding a unicorn over a rainbow?”

            “Oh, if they don’t tell her, I most certainly will,” Pax confirmed.

            Once Axel helped Kally out, he stepped into the van. For a moment, Calex thought they’d slam the door on their faces with a _ta-ta!_ and drive off. Instead, he pulled two golden daggers off a weapons rack. “Joey, Euna, I don’t have a lot of celestial metal. Don’t lose these.” He tossed them.

            Joey and Euna fumbled to catch the blades without hurting themselves.

            He asked Calex and Kally about their weapons. Calex hefted his bow and arrow pencil case. Unlike Joey, they’d managed to find all his parts. Kally went to reach inside her messenger bag. She froze.

            “Pax, um, how do I get your weasels out of my bag?” she asked quietly.

            “Stick your hand in there. They probably won’t bite,” Pax suggested. He hadn’t moved. With a chuckle, he made a low whistle. “Hunnie. Baller. Come do my bidding!”

            Her messenger bag shook. Shameful to say, Calex yelped about as loud as Joey and Euna when the two furry creatures darted out. They danced and flipped about Pax’s legs. _Those_ were the Mist guardians Lou Ellen had mentioned. This boy was a total nutter.

            Axel handed Kally a small knife to slip into her messenger bag. She started to ask if they’d get in trouble for bringing weapons, but she caught the stupidity of the question.

            Then Axel and Pax did something none of them were expecting.

            They took off their shirts.

            Axel withdrew several complex layers of straps and buckles from one of his rubbish bins. He tossed one to Pax, then went to clipping what looked like a harness across his chest.  There were four sheathes, two to the back and two to the side. Axel went to fill them with four steel blades. Pax’s harness was a little different, with two sheathes for his bronze daggers and a row of small compartments where he could fill in darts and canisters from his utility belt.

            As Axel twisted to tighten a strap, Calex did a double take. The skin across Axel’s back was marred with welts of scar tissue. The worst was half-hidden by his pants, stretching up along his hip. When Calex checked for comparison, he saw the hints of similar markings on Pax’s back, though Pax tried to keep his back to the wall.

            Calex glanced down, trying not to focus on the blemishes. He was curious but didn’t know either of them nearly well enough to ask about the marks.

            Once Axel and Pax were done arming themselves, they slipped on their shirts and jackets. There were a few bulges, but overall, Calex found himself horrified at how efficiently they’d hidden their arsenal.

            Axel paused, glancing at the girls. Something weighed back and forth in his head until he said, “Ladies, I need to put on my leg harness to strap on a sword. I’m sure there’s a café inside if you’d like to go ahead and grab us some food.”

* * *

 

 

            Axel looked like he had a gimp leg, but beyond that, the sword was invisible. It lacked a guard, so nothing seemed out of the ordinary. From what Calex could tell, they had weapons specially picked for sneaking into buildings. Pax explained that they couldn’t always use lacrosse bags and guitar cases.

            The brothers caught Calex before he could follow the girls in. Axel claimed he needed help with the weapons, but quickly proved he didn’t. When Pax walked off to join the others, leaving them to get the cavern tickets, Calex started to wonder if he could outrun Axel if the need arose.

            Although Calex expected Axel to do something menacing, he remained silent until they got inside.

            The interior of the building was quaint. An empty fireplace decorated the left wall, nuzzled next to a tiny sweets shop. Stuffed bats, sweatshirts, and various precious-looking stones littered the gift shop directly in front of them. Several tourists wandered within, waiting for the next tour. Against the wall they entered from, there was a motorcycle with bones in place of the handlebars. On the far right, a bored middle aged guy with a bald head and a scowl manned the ticket counter. Pax cheerfully waved and disappeared down a passageway between the gift shop and the fireplace.

            As soon as he was out of earshot, Axel slowed their pace towards the ticket booth.  “Ajax can read emotions,” he said. “Not all, like a child of Aphrodite or—I assume—a child of Eros. Only intense, painful emotions.”

            That power sounded awful. Although Calex did see envy wrought by desire, he saw the happiness too. He also hadn’t heard of any half-bloods that could only read pain. Calex wondered if this had something to do with the hatred emanating out of the seat in the back of the van. If they were already aware something was in the back, they might have wanted a secondary opinion about what it was. A glance at Axel’s calloused expression said that wasn’t the case.

            “I don’t know what you went through. Now is not the time to talk about it and I am not a person to give condolences to a stranger. However, Pax says you’re unstable. From what I know, none of you are trained to handle panic situations. If everything starts to fall apart down there, I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Kally: run away when I say to. If you don’t think you can obey, if you think you’ll break down or freeze up, I’m not letting you go down there with us. I will not have more demigod blood on my hands than necessary.”

            Calex wanted to protest. He wanted to point out that it was ironic for Pax to call someone unstable, that the Song sisters did a great job against the centaurs, and that he heard Kally handled well against the Silver Festus. He would be fine. They would come back with stories that would impress even Piper and Annabeth, something way better than riding a unicorn over a rainbow. 

            But Calex knew he wasn’t alright. He hadn’t wanted this quest; he wanted to be rotting in a mass grave in Kakata. The worst part was that someone else _knew_ he was wrong in the head. It was like getting a nasty cut. Sure, the pain was bloody awful, but the panic settled in when you _saw_ how much you were bleeding. No one could deny it then.

            The tone of Axel’s voice made him want to say, “Yes, sir,” more than the first time he met Percy.  Axel’s gaze reflected the perfect point between a crazed human and a wild animal. His eyes held respect, command, and a resolve that said, “ _Yes_ , _I will leave you to die to save the others.”_

            Calex tried to speak. Nothing happened. He choked back a sob.  

            Before Axel’s question, Calex hadn’t been afraid. Now he was.

 


	20. Kally: Love is in the Air..! Or Vengeance, I Can’t Really Tell the Difference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our heroes join forces to save Rachel Elizabeth Dare, but none of them were expecting love to stand in the way.

 

 

On one of her family vacations to the Outer Banks, Kally’s father had cut off someone so hard the other driver had to swerve not to get clipped. At the next rest stop, that exact driver was waiting in line beside Kally for the bathroom.

That was about how comfortable Kally felt. When everyone was in the van together, and they could focus on the holographic cards—which she used to _decimate_ Pax—she was fine. When Axel and Pax decided to strip their shirts, she stopped being fine. Kally had seen plenty of shirtless guys: the boys’ soccer team that practiced across from hers never wore shirts early in the season and her brothers walked around the house without shirts on. However, when Axel suggested he needed to take off his pants to hide his sword…

Axel suffered from a serious disease. Something Merry, with her great knowledge and love for psychology, called _hot-older-brother-syndrome_ : when a guy gave you fraternal vibes _or_ that was an older brother of a guy you liked and was _exceptionally_ attractive. Kally called it annoying.

If she ever felt awkward in a social situation, Kally tended to think WWMD: What would Merry do. That was the worst thing she could think of in this situation as Merry would have sat on the edge of the van and said, “ _I work with a magazine called Shirtless Anonymous Weekly. Would you mind demonstrating exactly how you strap that sheath onto your leg?”_  

So, she did the logical thing. She bolted to the entrance. Euna and Joey came in shortly after her. Then the delightful social anxiety set in of not knowing either girl. Fortunately, Chiron had allotted the girls money for a taxi and tickets into Howe Cavern. They used the taxi money for food.

The café had windows overlooking the hill and the HOWE CAVERN sign in the grass. A grand piano sat forlornly on a platform by the kitchen entrance, with a self-defeating sign that read, _Do Not Touch_. She found herself missing the music and chaos of Cabin Seven. Not the Apollo part—obviously. Just how inviting his children were.

This room felt empty by comparison

Conversation was painful at first. None of them appeared to have much in common. When Euna wasn’t in the garden with her dad or taking the martial arts classes he demanded they do, she spent most of her time on Tumblr, Instagram and the likes. Joey was really into dancing, K-pop, and Korean dramas and game shows. Something about a _Shiny Running Man_.

Kally didn’t know what to do when they started to argue. She didn’t think she’d ever be so relieved to see Pax round the bend from the entry to walk into the café. Calex and Axel came soon after. They appeared quite intent on their conversation.

“Normally, only Romans have unicorns,” Axel was saying.

Calex was hugging himself with one hand, the other pushing his black scarf against his chin. Apparently, he took unicorns very seriously, as he did not look well. As they took a seat, Calex asked, “Do they ride them into battle?” His voice trembled slightly.

Axel snorted. He stared out the window to where Vinyl Scratch grazed on the lawn. A child nearby pointed out the window, gasping about the unicorn. Her mother picked her up, saying, “Yea, that deer does have a big antler!”

  “No, they breed them to shave down their horns for unicorn draft,” Axel explained.

At the topic, Pax rolled his eyes and went back to constructing a small log cabin with his French fries. Kally really wanted to go Janga on him and pull out one of the structurally integral pieces.

Euna shifted in her seat and sipped at her soda. “You sound… disapproving.”

“Horns are permanent,” Axel explained. “On the average animal, they don’t grow back. From what I understand, unicorn horns _can_ grow back, but it takes a very long time and is very detrimental to their magic when they’re cut off.” Axel shrugged. “Regardless, it’s not any worse than the Greeks replacing their slaves with nymphs and satyrs.”

Joey looked appalled. “What? How can you call that slavery? They seem like they’re happy to serve us at camp—I mean they’d probably be bored without it.”

Pax sighed and dramatically threw himself back into his seat. “In the words of Alabaster,” he dropped his voice to sound deep and mysterious, “‘where in history have we heard that before?’” He glared at Axel. “I know this is a light and fun conversation to start on, but do we really have to talk about mythological creature rights? I mean, we’re about to fight _a freaking monster_. Isn’t that way more interesting? Can we at least place bets on who is most likely to get eaten?”

“You are,” Axel responded without hesitation. “I’ll bet another week’s worth of cleaning monster guts off the equipment.”

“My bet is on anyone other than me, and if I win, you’ll need to wear the shirt about Puerto Rican women when we go into Camp Half-Bl—”

“We’re going to be fighting a snake. A big one,” Axel interrupted.

Although Kally knew she should have been focusing on the topic at hand, she felt her brain prioritizing the questions she wouldn’t ask. “ _How are we going to survive_?” swapped out for, “ _Is Reyna Puerto Rican_?”

“I don’t know what the situation will be like down there. Ajax and I aren’t trained in hunting monsters, but we should at least be able to recover a retreat if we need to. Everyone stay quiet once we break away from the tour group—I don’t want to be caught off guard by this monster sneaking up on us. Do you have anything to add, Pax?” Axel asked.

Pax had gone back to thatching the roof of his French fry cabin with lettuce from his burger. Without looking up, he gravely said, “Well, it’s a snake. And it’s going to be big—what were you expecting?” He tore a piece of lettuce in half, dabbing it into Calex’s mayonnaise. Apparently he was, unsuccessfully, trying to glue curtains onto the cabin. “I can’t exactly do recon on a giant creature. I mean, Hades, all Phobetor said was to come here and a snake would be waiting. Apollo was even less forthcoming.”

No one had anything else to say. Kally was surprised neither Calex nor Joey protested Axel’s… presumed leadership? Although she hadn’t known them for very long, the acceptance seemed too rapid. Euna was easy enough to get along with and Kally learned to trust Axel after that fight with the dragon, but the other two?

_Then again, having Ares’ closet as the interior of your van speaks a lot for experience_.

They finished up their lunch. By finished up, Euna and Joey ate the pieces no one else could manage. For being so small, those girls’ stomachs must have linked up somewhere with an infinite pit in Tartarus or Mushroom Kingdom.

Calex walked off first. He said he wanted to “pop” by the gift shop for… Vinyl? Was that what they named the unicorn? _Isn’t that a unicorn on a TV show?_ Euna and Joey decided to go with him so they could get nuts or something to snack on later.

“What do unicorns eat?” Calex asked.

“Human flesh,” Pax responded, making a little _for sale_ sign with his napkin for the French fry cabin.

Calex balked, glancing from Pax to out the window. He had already stood up, but Kally thought he might immediately sit back down.

“You’re thinking of Geryon’s horses,” Axel chided.

Pax shrugged. “Honest mistake.”

 

* * *

 

 

The cavern tour was quick, the guide was overtly campy, and the elevator ride was the worst. Going to Luray Caverns was practically a right of passage in Virginia-- _Ah, you’ve got your ticket stub from Luray—you may move on to the next grade_ —but she’d never been to a different one. In Luray, you walked down a flight of slick stairs. Here, Kally realized, they’d be cornered once they went down.

The cavern _was_ beautiful.  The first formation they walked through looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie: a grey passageway only eighteen inches across that snaked back and forth. She could imagine a lost, drunk Hercules stumbling around the Underworld, deciding it would be easier to punch a new path—this one—than ask for directions.

Water rustled nearby once the cavern opened into a wider corridor. A tiny stream rushed past the path and continued around the next bend. Kally couldn’t seem to focus on the liquid for more than a few moments. It looked… foggy and it wasn’t her glasses.

“And _that_ ,” the tour guide happily announced, “Is the River Styx! You’ll notice the second guy to name stuff here was a bit of a Greek mythology nut.”

Pax made a low whistle. “The _actual_ River Styx,” he muttered. “I didn’t realize the Labyrinth took it through here.”

At those words, the water flowed from a reflective surface to a shimmery oil. Kally jumped as the Mist surrounding the river vanished from her sight. It was still beautiful, in the same eerie way untouched snow was when you knew a campground was buried underneath. She kept remembering the black tears Piper had cried in her nightmare. The thought of the darkness expanding throughout the cavern, like it had in her dream, wiping out the false lighting in the walls…

_What am I doing down here?_ she wondered. The tour guides had mentioned they had lanterns for them in the boats. Walking through here with only torchlight would be terrifying. And what boats exactly where they expecting them to get into?

Something bumped her arm.

Kally jumped.

Euna jumped the opposite direction. Both girls stared at each other, Kally’s hand in her messenger bad, Euna’s in her pocket.

“Sor—” Kally squeaked.

“Sorry,” Euna cut her off.

They laughed nervously, relaxed, and continued walking.

They passed “the pagoda” formation, which looked like a pinecone if it could get leprosy, the “Bridal Alter,” where the cavern recently had their 666th wedding between two that took fashion advice from the Adam’s family, and the piano formation, a spot for perfect reverberation where the tour guide hummed—appropriately—the _Imperial March._

Despite the fear of eminent death by some unknown giant snake, the tour went exceptionally well.

Until the River Styx widened into the Lake of Venus.

Around this time, Axel instructed them to hide inside the boats waiting on the lake while Pax distracted the tour guide. He’d flinched at the name of the lake, but was too busy helping Kally, Euna, Joey, and Calex into the boat for her to ask. Then, he was unbuckling his belt to withdraw his sword, so Kally couldn’t look at him to ask.

Kally didn’t actually see what performance Pax put on for the guide and the poor couple that happened to luck into their group. She lost sight of him when she ducked into the boat, but apparently whatever he did made the woman mad enough to shout at her husband and storm back to the entrance. After a few garbled words, the tour guide and man followed her.

The boat was long, with several rows of benches. A gondola pole rested horizontally to the boat on two hooks. Every part of her body said, _No, don’t get into the boat floating on nightmare tar and broken dreams,_ but she’d crouched down, waiting for Axel’s signal that it was okay to rise.

She got the signal in the manner of Pax’s black and yellow eyes peering over the other side.

“Coast is clear,” he grinned.

Joey—who’d been staying to the front of the group the whole time and now the front of the boat—sat up with a dagger in hand. Euna and Calex were just behind her. Axel immediately scanned their surroundings from the back of the boat. His mouth curved downward in worry.

“How did you do that?” Kally asked.

As Pax hopped into the middle to sit beside Kally, he said, “The four M’s: Mist, Magic, Misdirection, and Mayhem. That tour guide won’t even remember we were back here once he reaches the front. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

He turned on his announcer voice. “Ladies and Gentlemen! Half-bloods and mortals! Please, keep your hands and feet inside the boat at all times.” Axel grabbed some gloves from the rear of the boat and shoved their boat off the dock. Though called a lake, the walls of the cavern were still narrow. Kally could see bars installed in the wall for the tour guides to pull the boat along, which Axel put to use.

Pax continued like he were the one giving the tour, “For a half-blood, a dip in this water will cause excruciating pain and a severe loss of ambition or any general feeling of hope. And probably death—except for you Axel, because your tears cure Gorgan’s blood—“

All the lights shut down, plunging the cavern into absolute darkness.

Kally screamed.

_Child of Light…_

She couldn’t tell if the voice was in her head. She didn’t care if she were reliving her nightmare or if this was it—the darkness—this was just like the darkness in her—

Someone covered her mouth.

She went to struggle and kick. The boat rocked.

Calex swore in a language she didn’t understand.

Then her panic subsided enough for her to realize someone was whispering in her ear. The smell of chocolate overwhelmed the musty scent of the caverns. Whatever she’d landed on had a line of hard bumps with sharp points. Darts?

Pax had pulled her against his chest to keep her from capsizing the boat. “Hey—it’s okay—they just shut off the electricity—if you close your eyes, it’s just like anywhere else with a giant monster—right? Just hold on—Axel will light the lanterns—see?”

A dim, pink glow came from his other side, silhouetting the way his hair wildly framed his face. In the soft lighting, she could see how Axel desperately clung to one of the wall bars, trying to sturdy the boat, _not_ lighting any lanterns. His jaw tightened in rage and fear.

Toward the front of the boat, Calex, Euna and, Joey all stared at the seat beside Pax, making Kally wonder exactly who had a pink lantern.

A melodious, feminine voice cheered, “You two are _so_ cute.”

Pax grit his teeth. “Don’t look at her Kally,” he hissed.

Don’t look at her? Once she saw her, Kally couldn’t look _away_ from her.

The woman was beautiful. Kally couldn’t think of how to describe her, probably because she _couldn’t_ describe her. Her hair kept shimmering and shifting. Each time Kally thought the woman couldn’t get more beautiful, she did, occasionally reminding her of her mother, occasionally flickering to look like Shakira after being hit with Love Potion #9.

She wore a violet evening gown that dropped off one shoulder, making the outfit have an elegant toga vibe. A pink scarf shimmered about her delicate neck, giving off the glow and the aroma of roses. She sat on the edge of the boat, as comfortable and at ease as if it were a throne. Kally was sure the boat wouldn’t _dare_ knock a woman like that into the water.

“Oh look, my least favorite—” Pax thought about it for a moment. “Yea, my least favorite goddess.” He kept his eyes and hands firmly on Kally, like he was afraid she’d stumble overboard trying to touch the goddess. To be fair, she probably would.

“Aphrodite,” Axel spit out the name like it tasted of Chiron’s laundry.[1] He was the only one that seemed unaffected by her beauty. Calex, Euna, and Joey had the most comical case of slack jaw ever recorded, likely to break the Guinness Book of Facial Records.

Calex managed to repeat her name.

Aphrodite’s gaze fell on him. “Oh! My little grandson! How handsome you’ve become. I’m so glad my son cheated on his unworthy wife for your mother. Tiwa was a lovely girl.” The goddess called her daughter-in-law a much less ladylike word than “wife,” one that shattered the illusion enough for Calex to shut his mouth. Joey and Euna shifted uncomfortably.

Aphrodite found an invisible wrinkle in her dress and pressed out the fabric with a finger. “The Pax boys…” she mused. “You know Ajax, you should be more polite to me. Just the other day—or year—time flies when you’re watching my husband’s reality TV—but I was talking to your mother. Not in public. I wouldn’t be caught anywhere near someone with such a ghastly fashion sense, but we were talking about your future love life—”

“You were talking to my mom?!” Pax turned his head to gawk at her in horror. “About—my—my love li…” Once he caught sight of her, his voice trailed off and Kally felt his grip on her weaken.

The goddess sighed dreamily. One of her hands adjusted the scarf at her neck, increasing the smell of roses. Between that and Pax’s chocolate scent, Kally felt like she was on an cheesy date, which was appropriate as she was on the Lake of Venus… with the goddess of love… on a gondola. All they needed was her “dad” to show up and start singing haikus in Italian.

“Your mother helps to craft some of the most beautiful love tragedies—” Aphrodite waved a hand and giggled. “Oh, just wait and see what we discussed about Percy! I think he forgot I told him his story was a love tragedy. I don’t think you kids know what a tragedy is anymore.” 

While she talked, Axel let go of the railing to pick up some of the lanterns. As though the goddess wasn’t glistening in all her glorious gorgeousness, he reached across the middle of the boat to hand one to Calex, Euna, and Joey. Really, he dumped them into each of their laps, since they didn’t react to his offer. “Light those,” he snapped at Pax. Axel withdrew a lighter from his jacket and peeled one of Pax’s hands off Kally to take the lighter.

Pax shook his head dreamily. “Uh—yea—sure.”

Once done, Axel stood up straight and crossed his arms. “What do you want?”

“Watch your tone Axel Pax. You’re in my territory—the Bridal’s Alter, the Lake of Venus…”

As Pax lit the lanterns, it became easier to remember what Kally was doing down here, that she should be afraid, and that she should be embarrassed the goddess of love called her and Pax _cute_. She managed to look away from Aphrodite when Pax handed her a lantern.  

From her peripheral, Kally saw that the goddess moved a lot. She reminded Kally of one of the popular girls at school, like Tammi, needing to be the center of attention and not tolerating being ignored.

After making all of them wait a few more seconds to fix her hair, she said, “Demigods can’t cross this lake without my blessing.”

“Do you mean your verbal, metaphorical blessing? Or your literal, godly blessing?” Pax asked. “Like are you going to braid our hair or something?”

Aphrodite sighed, “Ajax, nothing could tame your hair.”

“Why thank you.”

The goddess did an adorable, happy jump in her seat, one that made Kally want to get giddy and giggle. “Someone in your group hasn’t had their first kiss yet!” Aphrodite exclaimed with a clap. “I want to make sure she or he does before you run into those hopeless huntresses, else I think the ‘call to the wild—’” Aphrodite’s voice turned sour. “—will be too strong. Give me this offering and I’ll let you pass.”

“That is the most arbitrary—” Pax complained.

Axel cut him off, “Not any worse than Kronos’ sit-still-for-a-minute game.”

Pax sighed, “That was the _longest_ minute ever.”

Kally’s giddiness sank to horror. She had never had a boyfriend. At parties, she’d never played spin-the-bottle and refused _those_ types of dares. She was too embarrassed at the thought. The only time she’d ever—

“Do dreams count?” Kally blurted.

Aphrodite laughed. “With another half-blood? Definitely. Especially when you made him so flustered! He still isn’t sure if he is supposed to tell Will.”

“ _That_ was what happened with Nico?!” Pax asked.

“Shut up Pax,” she snapped.

At least Kally knew she wouldn’t have the embarrassment of kissing… someone in front of everyone. That did beg the question: who did? Reflexes won over respectfulness and Kally found herself glancing at the others. Joey sat, glaring at her sister. Euna stared at Aphrodite like she was speaking Greek which—to be fair—she probably was. Either that, or the goddess’ beauty spell still had full effect. Calex and Axel exchanged some unspoken message before Calex leaned over and pecked Euna on the lips.

Euna didn’t react immediately. She blinked, gave Calex a bewildered look and muttered, “What the H—”

“Calex!” Aphrodite chided. “That was a _very_ boring kiss for being a son of Eros.”

Calex frowned. He didn’t seem to know if he was in the right to argue with his grandmother. A blush was finally coloring Euna’s cheeks as she glared at the bottom of the boat. Joey nudged her and grumbled, “Lucky.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Axel snapped. He straightened to his full height and glowered down at the goddess. He must have a will made from celestial bronze to stare down such a beauty. Kally noticed an uncertain frown still played at his lips. He was nervous. “Let us cross. Go play with your little boyfriend—assuming he’s healed up enough for you _to_ play with him.”

“I don’t tolerate rudeness,” Aphrodite said. Her eyes solidified into a terrifying pink sheen. “I was willing to overlook your prior transgressions for the sake of my grandson but… if you can’t hold your tongue, neither will I.” She sighed dramatically and flicked her scarf end from one shoulder to the other. “Pax, the person you love is going to fall in love with your best friend.”

“What!?” Pax squeaked. “But—”

“And Axel, Reyna is fated to have her heart stolen by a god turned mortal.” She stared happily off in the corner. “Those romances are the best. No one can ever win in those scenarios.”

A guttural growl emitted from Axel. The nervousness was gone. Rage blazed in his eyes as he drew his sword. “Ares isn’t here to protect you,” Axel reminded her. “Take those back.”

Aphrodite smiled at the sword like he’d offered her a rare—albeit deadly—flower. She rose to her feet. “Love,” she fluttered her eyelashes coyly, “causes more agony than war and brings a man to his knees much faster.”

The movement should have been too fast for Kally’s eyes to follow. Before any of them could shout for Axel to stop, he thrust his sword straight at the goddess’ throat.

The cavern went silent. A slight draft of warm air brought the cloying reek of roses. Kally clutched the discus in her bag, unsure if she should try to stop Axel from making a monumental mistake or knock out Aphrodite long enough for all of them to run. Could you outrun a goddess?

Aphrodite didn’t flinch. She touched her scarf, the end fluttering up in the breeze to smack Axel in the face.

At first, Kally didn’t understand what happened.

Axel dropped his sword into the boat before it made contact with the goddess. His hands rubbed and clawed at his eyes, like she’d smacked some high quality eye shadow onto his face. “N—No,” he whined in a tone Kally never thought she’d hear from him.

He dropped to his knees before the goddess.

Aphrodite leaned over. Her rippling hair touched his shoulder as she whispered sweetly, “Oh, Axel… you’re so cute.” She pressed her cheeks with both hands, like they were flush. “No one can ignore me, but it is flattering to watch you try.”

“Don’t—” Axel murmured, one of his hands reaching to catch hers.

Aphrodite took a step back.

The river rumbled. In the dim lighting, Kally could see the oil undulate in tiny black coils. The sight almost made her choke. Euna withdrew something from her pocket. Joey held up her celestial bronze dagger.

“Even the monster here recognizes my beauty!” Aphrodite giggled. “I’ll leave you to all that fighting nonsense. I heard that you’re seeking Apollo’s Oracle. I think she’s just on that ridge.” She gestured to an indent in the wall, maybe ten feet up the river. “If you can survive to get to her.”

“Wait…” Axel gasped, still clutching his face

“Don’t worry Axel.” Aphrodite placed two delicate fingers against Axel’s chin. With the movement, Axel’s hands fell away and he looked up at her. Kally was glad she couldn’t make out his expression. “I’ll come back for you,” Aphrodite assured him. “When you least want me and most need me.”

The goddess vanished. Her pink hue disappeared, leaving the cavern in the weaker light of the lanterns and the glow of their celestial bronze blades. The smell of roses dissipated to another nauseating scent. As it grew in intensity, Kally felt the urge to gag, like a different skunk had been hit by a car each day of the week and were found in various stages of decay

All they could hear was the splash of the River Styx.

Then the center of the Lake of Venus boiled.

Something erupted from the water. Waves sloshed out, slamming into the side of their boat and smashing them back towards the dock. Kally gripped her bench. Sprinkles of the river splashed against her face and hands, making her scream out in pain. They burned like super heated pinpricks with the emotional impact of a rejected college application.

In front of them, dripping black tar and reeking of rotted corpses, a serpent rose.  It was as thick as the boat, with spiky scales jutting out like miniature shields. The eyes weren’t reflective, their obscurity worse than any illumination. In all of its darkness, the only glimmer came from the lanterns’ reflection off the fangs, each as long as Axel’s sword.

“ ** _Child of Light_** _.”_

Kally felt tears seep down her cheeks. Those words weren’t in her head. They reverberated off the cavern walls like the earth itself was screaming.

**_“I welcome you with this embrace_**.”

The monster opened its jaws to swallow them.

 

* * *

 

 

[1] For the record, Chiron wanted to say he resents this comment.


	21. Ajax: A Short Interlude Before Being Eaten. Please Exit Right to Use the Restroom Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pax has a lot of things to think about while falling towards death, but he wasn't expecting an Apollo hiaku to be one of those things. Thanks Apollo. You're a jerk.

 

 

Pax spent the few precious seconds before the strike doing something very important: thinking of all the creative names he could call Aphrodite.  Most involved Greek mythological beasts. A few involved things he was pretty sure he’d heard Kouta say about that girl who spoiled the end of Star Wars for their family. Others were things Zeus supposedly said about his wife.

Then he thought about how _annoyingly_ _timed_ Axel’s incapacity was. Couldn’t Aphrodite have picked a less important time to bewitch his brother into being painfully in love with her? Like, couldn’t she wait until Axel’s wedding day and ruin that instead?

One glimpse at that drakon’s _Yea… you’re going to die_ look left Calex petrified. From how similarly this was playing out to Kally’s nightmare or—Pax feared—prophecy, he guessed she was in shock. Pax was so used to waiting for Axel’s orders, then doing whatever he felt like doing—and was so worried that Axel might never get a wedding—that he was a little preoccupied.

Thank the gods Euna was ready to save them, because he certainly wasn’t.

She smacked Calex across the face. Once she had his attention, she pointed at Axel’s groveling form. “Get him out of here!”

Calex swallowed. He had enough time to lug the deadweight of Axel onto the dock before the snake snarled its hospitable, “ ** _I welcome you with this embrace_** ,” and lunged.

There was no dodging out of the way. The mouth, when wide, stretched further than a funhouse door.

Pax might have enough poison to kill the snake, but setting it off inside the cavern would kill all of them. He would die, they would fail Phobetor and Apollo’s quest, and Apollo would sing haikus about it as a bum in New York City:

_The Silver-Tongued Snake_

_Devoured by a Serpent_

_Who Dies by Venom_

There was some kind of poetic justice or something going on there, right?

Pax and Joey braced for impact. Euna stepped to the edge of the boat and dropped two small, round objects.

What sounded like thunder cracked from her hands. Whatever she dropped expanded in seconds, roots latching into the river, trunks smashing upward until two full fledged hardwoods slammed their branches into the oncoming drakon.

The trunks groaned under the weight, branches snapping and cracking at the top, bark showering down on them with the intensity of a thousand splinters.

The drakon hissed and shrank back, spitting branches like the _Dog Stick Generator 3000._

The tops of the trees were decimated. They wouldn’t handle another hit.

Euna collapsed backwards.

Pax caught her before her head could smack into one of the boat benches. Her eyes had rolled back and she gasped like she’d passed out halfway through a marathon.

If they survived until she woke up, he’d have to tell her that was awesome. Until then, he unceremoniously dumped Euna onto the dock behind him. He hoped Calex was smart enough to figure that one out.

The drakon shook the last of the tree branches out of its teeth. As it snapped its attention back to them, the entire cavern trembled. They needed to attack _now._

Pax twirled out his daggers. The celestial bronze felt warm in his chilled hands. He assumed he would get gobbled up alone, futilely trying to buy the others time for an unorganized escape, but Joey unsheathed her blade beside him.

“Don’t look it in the eyes,” Pax said. “It’ll—”

“—paralyze you. Duh,” Joey snapped.

Pax wanted to mimic her in a highpitched voice, but Joey had already sprinted towards the monster.

The drakon hissed, expelling a flood of noxious stench. Pax hoped that wasn’t actually poison, though the hope was obsolete if it was. Time slowed as it snapped forward for a second attack.

Joey jumped at one of the remaining tree branches, using it like a high powered spring board. Anyone other than a child of Demeter would have stumbled and slipped, or completely miscalculated the aim, but the branch seemed to bend to Joey’s will, throwing her straight at the monster.

Unwilling to be outdone, Pax put one dagger between his teeth and sheathed the other. He raced up to the tree, jumped, and swung off the lowest branch.

Joey made contact first. She landed on the serpent’s snout. A maniac scream erupted from her mouth. With both hands, she slammed her dagger into the drakon’s right eye.

It _roared_.

A horrifying slosh of liquid spewed from the wounded orifice. The drakon banked hard to the right, which was fortunate for Pax, since his trajectory was off. Now, instead of slamming directly into the monster’s mouth, he would harmlessly impale himself on one of those shield-like scales, just below the mouth.

Another shock wave shook the cavern as the drakon smashed its face into the wall. Joey slumped off onto one of the artificial lighting ledges, hopefully alive. She didn’t look like a pancake, but he couldn’t be certain with the preoccupation of staying alive.

Pax caught hold of one of the scales, twisting to avoid a grotesque belly button piercing. Pain tore at his hands, like he’d grabbed hold of a tire spinning fast enough to earn a ticket in the Nevada desert. His muscles screamed to let go. _Give up!_

The water from the River Styx—it coated the drakon’s whole body. Each handhold would burn. He was suddenly glad to be biting his dagger, else he’d be screaming in agony.

He forced himself to swing to the next scale up. _You’re back at the circus_ , he told himself. _If you don’t make it to the top in time, it’ll ruin Axel’s final performance. Move._

As he went, he felt for any soft spots in the drakon’s scale armor. With the burning in his fingers, he doubted he would feel one if did it existed.

All he’d have to do was scale the scales to reach the soft underbelly and stab with more force than Hercules with a temper tantrum. Somehow without falling off. And before the monster decided to submerge.

This would have been so much simpler if they could have talked things out. Pax was much better at that and running away.

The scales shrank in size. Pax grabbed the dagger in his mouth. “You were supposed to monologue!” he yelled at the drakon, going for a stab.

It didn’t like the critique. The drakon whipped its head up. Hard. Pax lost his grip. Gravity disappeared. He’d gone airborne.

As he tumbled up, he thought, _this can go one of two ways._ Either he fell into the River Styx, resulting in death—or possible invulnerability—but probably death _or_ the drakon had repositioned itself to eat him.

Once he started to descend, he found the drakon had repositioned itself to eat him.  

As he fell between the teeth, Pax stabbed upward with all his strength, thinking _“You were supposed to monologue_ ” would be awful last words.

 

 


	22. Kalypso: I Give Leo Valdez a Run for His Drachma (Don’t Worry. We Compare Notes in Book Two)

 

 

Pax fell into the drakon’s mouth. Kally didn’t register it. She didn’t register how precariously Joey hung off the lighting fixture, unconscious and dangling above the River Styx. She didn’t blink when Calex dragged Euna away from the docks. All she could do was stare at the demon from her night terrors. She wished she could laugh and say, “ _yea, you’re a lot smaller than I thought you’d be_ ,” or ask, “ _you want some lotion for that scaly skin_?” but all she could do was stare as it went to kill her new friends. As it snatched up Pax.

Until someone shouted, “Throw your discus!”

Kally assumed it would be Axel that would snap her into action, but the voice was much higher pitched.

The patter of paws echoed behind her. Kally didn’t have time to look.

The paralysis broke. She grabbed the Argonaut statue from her bag.

After the monster clamped its jaws down around Pax, the drakon reared back as though in pain. It shook its head. When it hissed and its teeth parted, Kally balked at the sight of Pax.

His dagger was jammed into the roof of the drarkon’s mouth. He clung desperately with one hand. With his other, he stabbed rapidly upward with his second dagger. She doubted he could hold on much longer with the drakon’s thrashing.

Like when she fought the Silver Festus, her body moved on instinct. This time, she took several steps back, out of the boat. Energy pulsed through her whole form. She did a preemptive twist the opposite direction, then unwound, sweeping her leg as she went into a full spin, feeling the energy radiate from her legs through her hips, past her twisting torso and out through her right arm, to the ends of her  fingertips.

The discus choked out smoke in the dim lantern light, spinning straight for the serpent’s good eye.

As Kally watched it spiral towards the monster, something _huge_ lunged off the dock beside her, making the wood under her feet rattle.

A mastiff, the size of Apollo’s sun chariot, pounced at the drakon. The person riding atop it, Stygian Iron sword drawn, was Nico Di Angelo.

The discus made contact first. It nailed the drakon exactly on the mark, knocking the beast’s head backwards. The impact and recoil threw Pax out of the mouth. He would have fallen straight into the River Styx had he not slammed into Nico.

“My hero! My Goth Dark Knight!” Pax cried, throwing his arms around Nico. The son of Hades was completely taken aback, apparently not expecting the drakon to spit gracious demigods instead of fire.  Though this saved Pax from certain death, it left Nico incapable of making an attack, arms now struggling to hold his sword with the slime-covered Pax in his lap.

This didn’t deter the mastiff. The dog nailed into the drakon, teeth deflecting harmlessly off the serpent’s scales. The weight drove the already disoriented monster further back.

Once done, the mastiff—should she even call it that? That thing could be used in place of a wrecking ball—bounded toward light fixture that Joey dangled from. Water from the river didn’t seem to bother the tank dog, as its hind legs sank into a shallow section.

“Bring the girl back here Mrs. O’Leary!” the voice from before called again, this time _right_ behind her.

An arrow lobbed over Kally’s shoulder. The drakon wasn’t anywhere near recovery yet, still writhing in the water from playing catch with a discus and a mastiff. The arrow clinked into one of the exposed shield-scales. At first, Kally thought the hit would just deflect off. Then a blast of sound exploded around them. Like the band of Orpheus Metal was doing a reunion tour in the cavern, the walls trembled with the slide of an electric guitar.

Will Solace notched another arrow beside her. She never thought she’d be so relieved or so happy to call him her brother.

“That’s _the_ Python!” Will shouted. Fortunate, since there was no way she would have heard him otherwise. She was shocked the walls hadn’t crumbled at that blast. “It took Apollo’s entire sun quiver to defeat her! I saw it in a dream—we _can’t_ win this battle!”

Kally wanted to ask how he knew it was a she, but was too terrified that the drakon was important enough to need a “the” in front of the name.

Mrs. O’Leary jumped at the light fixture before bounding back onto the dock. The wood creaked under the weight, sounding close to breaking. The mastiff had managed to grab Joey and held her by the shirt like a very pretty chew toy. She dropped the half-blood onto the cavern floor. Nico dumped Pax beside her with a snarl, “Get off!”

“Just wait until I express my gratitude the way Kally expresses hers,” Pax said with a wink.

Despite the desperate situation, both Nico and Kally scowled at him. 

Will glanced between them, then back to the drakon trying to right itself. “You.” He pointed at Nico. “Me. We talk about this later. After we find Rachel and get out of here.”

“She’s on the ridge just up—”

Kally was cut off when the dock trembled under them. She was expecting another mastiff to drop inconveniently out of the shadows, but instead felt the ground under her give.

The drakon’s tail snapped through the dock. Kally, Pax, Joey, Nico, and Will were hurtled backwards onto the cavern floor. River water splattered everywhere. Kally shrieked in pain when it hit her skin. She heard her brother’s cry harmonize with hers. The tail continued through the dock and slammed Mrs. O’Leary into the wall. A stalactite crashed into the floor beside the downed mastiff.

Then Kally’s nightmare came true.

Scales with the slime of the River Styx seared off her exposed flesh. A coil of darkness wrapped around her. Her messenger bag crushed against her side, Axel’s knife now useless within. She tried to scream, but choked on the air. The burn of the oily liquid blinded her; she knew sight wouldn’t matter. All the lanterns except one were doused. The one survivor flickered dimly beside where Pax and Nico had fallen and Joey lay motionless.

The serpent’s tail coiled once around Kally, and a second time around Will, dragging both of them back towards the river.

_“ **I need neither sight nor sound to taste you, Spawns of Apollo**_ ,” Python’s voice echoed throughout the cavern. “ ** _Welcome to the end I will grant all of his offspring._** ”

Air squeezed out of her lungs. She thought the drakon would let them burn up in the River Styx. Instead, Python raised her tail, keeping them above the shore ledge.

Nico rose to one knee, teeth grit. His Stygian blade seemed to suck up what light was in the room. “Give him back,” Nico growled.

“ ** _I don’t need you to be a husk of a shadow yet, Son of Hades_** ,” Python snarled. “ ** _But if you insist, I will find another candidate.”_**

“Don’t!” Will rasped weakly. “You’ll—shadow—you promised!”

Kally didn’t know what Python meant by candidate and didn’t care. She just remembered that Nico saved her in her dream. She also remembered how Nico appeared to flicker in and out of existence when Apollo grabbed him. Hades must grant intense powers, but—if Nico couldn’t use his half-blood abilities—it might not matter.

“I’m getting you out of there,” Nico snarled. He raised his hand.

Pax stood up beside Nico. He did the only logical Pax thing he could do to the most powerful half-blood in the room. He darted him. Nico managed a startled look before he collapsed onto the floor beside Joey.

“No self-sacrificing today,” Pax stated, patting Nico’s cheek. “Kally, Will, you’re getting yourselves out of there.”

 

Kally wanted to scream at Pax—kick, bite, punch, find the most convenient unicorn and gore him with some rainbow power. Maybe Nico couldn’t have used his half-bloodness, but at least that had given her hope. Now, she could feel the coil tighten around her. The slime from the River Styx seared her flesh like acid, triggering reminders of every failure, of every let down: all the failed Chemistry tests, her disappointment of not making it onto the school soccer team, finding out her mother cheated on her father with a joke of a god whose arch-nemeses was about to crush her to death and who couldn’t give her decent enough abilities to defend herself. What could she do? Throw things and apparently sing. She couldn’t do either with Sir Hiss squeezing the air out of her lungs.

One of her ribs _cracked_.

Pain exploded, making her light headed. She couldn’t even scream. This was it. She would pass out into darkness, just like in her nightmares, just like—

“Kally, your mom didn’t cheat on your dad!” Pax shouted. “Or, at least, she didn’t want to!”

_Why on Earth is he bringing this up now?_   Kally couldn’t understand how he could even say that. She was living proof that—

“Apollo _attacked_ your mother,” Pax talked quickly. Although she couldn’t see him, his voice increased in volume. “I’ll bet your mother has a beautiful voice and is as pretty as you are. I’ll bet Apollo couldn’t resist her, tried to seduce her, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. The gods do that. Doesn’t that make you mad?”

Mad wasn’t the right word. Sick was more accurate. Tears cut cold paths through the smears of slime on her face. Her skin didn’t feel hot anymore. Her stomach felt like it was tightening, engulfing all the pain and heat and centralizing into a horrific realization, a harsh, bitter feeling.

The effects of Will’s sonic arrows must have been wearing off, because Python listened to Pax’s shouts in curiosity. “ ** _The gods are known for such treachery. Are you suggesting she not follow such gods, Silver-Tongued Snake?”_**

“No,” he laughed coldly. “I’m suggesting you’re the only thing between her and punching her dad in the face. That’s gotta burn her up on the inside, right?”

_Burn_.

There was a tugging sensation in her gut. A blazing rage—stronger than anything she’d ever felt or wanted to feel—replaced any awareness of pain or _self_. A wail started deep in the pit of her stomach and clawed for an exit.

A roar inside her ears silenced the sound of the river, Python, and Pax’s voice, but she could still _feel_ his words like poison seeping into her mind.

Apollo had… attacked her mother? Apollo had ruined her family _by force_.

Kally’s gaze cleared. She could see layers of skin, like a protective sheath, attached to Python’s fangs. That giant mouth, dripping black tar… Suddenly, it didn’t scare her. Python wasn’t the monster anymore. Just an obstacle. 

“GET OUT OF MY WAY!”

The tugging in her stomach released with her wail.

A torrent of light burst around Kally. Warmth cascaded around her like the bite of a desert sandstorm. When Pax described it to her later, he said it look like she supernovaed. Colors flooded the cavern until everything flamed to a brilliant white.

Python screamed.

The coils loosened. 

Kally couldn’t see anything but white as her body crashed onto the shore. She could hear Will gasp in pain beside her. Her anger dissipated to exhaustion. They were _alive_. Python had released them. _What was I doing? What was I thinking?_

_Get up_ , she screamed at herself internally. It felt like Mr. and Mrs. O’Leary along with four of their puppies had decided to take a nap on her back. She couldn’t will herself to move. She couldn’t see. Her hands didn’t even feel like they were there.

The brilliance was dimming. In its place, a nothingness enveloped the cavern. 

All Kally could hear was the satisfied hiss, “ ** _You are the one here to reap the scythe of the lion’s labors… We will meet again Child of Light.”_**

Then the world faded. Darkness inherited the earth.

 


	23. Ajax: New Checklist: Kidnap Percy’s Dog

 

 

                Then Python left. No maniacal laughter or cloud of mysterious dust. No monologue—which Pax was still sore about! Python sank into the River Styx faster than Phobetor could say, “Bacon!” Pax gave her a C- on the Evil Scale of Evil.

                This was fortunate for Team Pax though, as they only had four conscious players on the field: a cowering Calex, a groveling Axel, a collapsed Will, and…. Well, at least Pax could stand.

                Mrs. O’Leary was coming to. Will whistled for her. She had to first growl at the River Styx until her pride was less damaged and she felt menacing again. Pax assured her that the water was quivering in its riverbed.    

                Once done, she followed Will’s order to retrieve Rachel from further up the river.

 Pax wanted to protest. He loved hellhounds. He rode quite a few at Camp Othrys, making sure to shout, “Yip Yip Appa!” each time he got on. Pax didn’t want Mrs. O’Leary to get in the water only to have Python come back for a dog biscuit before diving back to… wherever monsters went to be evil when not tormenting heroes.

There wasn’t any other choice but to have Mrs. O’Leary go in. With the dock and boat smashed, the only other option was a nice cavern swim in some acidy goop. When the adrenaline wore off and Pax felt the river-burns, his skin said, _You know what Styx? Rain check on me. We’ll swim in you on our **next** vacation. _   

                By the time Mrs. O’Leary swam back with Rachel, Calex found his way to them. He looked miserable, but Pax couldn’t blame him for freezing up; Pax still remembered the terror he felt when he saw Reyna and Jason break through their defense at Mount Othrys, the Romans swarming and slaughtering half-bloods and monsters alike. Pax had ran. 

                Pax knew enough to realize, _It’s okay. I’m a coward too,_ would only upset Calex further. Though the urge to say it burned him more than the River Styx, he resisted.

                For thirty seconds.

                “It’s okay. I’m—”

                “Joey’s hurt,” Calex interrupted. The helpless look he gave Will indicated that it was more than a flesh wound.

                Mrs. O’Leary set Rachel down beside Will.  The Oracle was cloaked in a black robe, appropriately mysterious and oracly. She was out cold, like Kally beside her, but appeared fine otherwise. They looked so peaceful. Pax had to remind himself they weren’t dead.

                Once they got over to Joey, Pax could see that she did not look nearly as much like a peaceful corpse.

                They carried Kally, Rachel, and Nico to the safe little Calex clinic: a little niche behind a rock formation. Pax felt his fury reignite when he saw Axel hunched over, clutching his head like he’d been stuck listening to Kally’s dad sing “Cotton Eyed Joe” nonstop for two hours. His brother already had enough emotional drama to fill four seasons worth of Hephaestus reality TV—and likely had with exceptionally high ratings. He did not need one of the most hateable goddess hitting him with some love juju.

                Euna looked fine. She snored quietly while taking the world’s best earned powernap.

                Beside her, Joey looked like she’d been waterskiing for a couple of hours without the board. Bruises dotted all of her exposed skin. After going through enough battles, Pax could identify which of her bones were broken and which were… maybe less broken. Will said she passed out from pain and not a head injury. When Pax asked, “Yay?” Will stared at him.

                Will sat her up to spoon feed her some ambrosia, which made Pax wonder if Zeus ever tried to spoon feed any of his children, maybe with lightning. Will said he didn’t have enough energy to properly heal Joey. They agreed to send her ahead to Camp Half-Blood on Mrs. O’Leary’s back. Will wanted to send Rachel, Joey, and Calex back together, but the hellhound shied at the idea of Joey having riding partners. Pax sympathized. Tiny Korean girls were heavy after you’ve been smashed into a cavern wall by a metro-long snake. And after shadow traveling 300 miles.

                That was definitely the best trained hellhound Pax had ever seen. All Will had to do was promise her a minotaur leg when they got home and she was all whines and happiness. This unnerved Pax once he remembered a minotaur leg was just a normal person leg. He wondered where they got those from. Failed bunk inspections?

                Other than Joey, everyone else passed Dr. Solace’s exam with flying colors. Pax expected a sticker and lollipop, like he heard you got from officially licensed doctors. Except, everyone _did_ have burns. Kally, Will, and Pax had fun bubbly blisters on their hands, face, and anywhere else the River Styx sprayed or slimed them. Nectar and bandages for all! Stickers and lollipops for none.

                Physically, Calex and Axel looked like their usual _sexy-and-dangerous_ selves. Emotionally, Pax wanted them to hug it out. Both were a few steps away from hysterical freak outs.  Their shame and turmoil emanated out loud enough that Pax wanted to put on his headphones. Pax knew Calex would fall apart. He’d warned Axel about the possibility, knowing Axel would give Calex the order to run, that Axel would hold everything together like he always did. Now, Axel was a mess too.

                Pax couldn’t help either of them until they were out of the cavern. They’d latched Joey on Mrs. O’Leary, sent her off, and turned their attention to getting in the van.

 

* * *

 

 

                The ticket master didn’t like it when four unescorted tourists stepped out of the elevator with three unconscious girls and an unconscious Sexy Goth Prince. Pax felt happier than he should have that Will wasn’t in any condition to carry Nico. Calex had the honor of carrying the Son of Hades on one shoulder and Rachel on the other, like the weight of two people would counteract the weight of his guilt.  Pax carried Kally. Axel carried Euna, after Pax smacked Axel hard enough to get a response out of him.

                Pax tried to goad Axel into their favorite debate to take his mind off Aphrodite: would they rather have EMTs on their case or the police. EMTs, as usual, won. When they got upstairs and the ticket master freaked out about tourists being in the caverns during the “freak earthquake,” Pax started to cry, telling him their tour guide forgot them—a feat with the Mist he’d been quite proud of—then the docks collapsed in the earthquake and their friends got hurt— _are you crazy? We’re not waiting for an ambulance! We’re going to the hospital! Wait until my wealthy uncle hears about this!_

                Pax was satisfied to think that he’d caused at least one nervous breakdown that day.

                He was disappointed Hunnie and Baller didn’t run up to them in their usual Kung-Fu Weasel style when they approached the van. Calex glanced vainly around for his unicorn pal, but the mythical creature must have rainbowed off to join some friends.

                The silence remained mercifully unawkward until they got to the Pax mobile. It wasn’t really big enough for all of them, but if you closed your eyes and wished real hard, you would still be smashed against someone else. Pax told Axel to drive. Keeping focused on not crashing the car and killing all of them—that would clear anyone’s mind. And Axel was a safer driver when needing to get to an abandoned road before _someone_ inside realized they should call a supervisor or 911.

                Pax told Calex to sit shotgun, since he and Axel seemed so eager to chat. This left Will and Pax in the back with a hoard of unconscious people.

                Will clearly didn’t know what to think of Pax. Sure, Will thanked him for darting Nico so his boyfriend didn’t implode into moonshine and ghost sheets or whatever happened when he used his half-blood powers. However, Pax also implied some unpleasant things about Will’s father. And Will loved his father, or Pax assumed so from how passionately Will did his morning sun salutations.

                The only quick agreement they seemed to come to was that Nico and Kally should be separated by Euna and Rachel when they were put in the back of the van.

                By the time they’d picked up Happy Meals from the closest McDonald’s, Euna, Kally, and Nico were stirring, but only Nico reached full consciousness. The poison on Pax's darts left Nico foggy and utterly confused at waking up in a strange car beside the Oracle. He was quite pleased when Will handed him his Happy Meal. Sort of. Pax had never seen someone look so simultaneously excited and pouty.[1]

                The first thing Nico said after thanking them for the meal was a thoughtful, “There are dead people all over your van.”

                “Thanks,” Pax said, “We recently redecorated.”

                Internally, he said, _Thanks._ _We’ll never be able to sleep in here again._    

                He could guess one reason why there would be ghosts lurking around their transportation and that was a soul-lifting—haha—conversation for another day, when Axel wasn’t already an emotional mess and Pax didn’t already feel like punching the Son of Hades in the face.

                Nico munched quietly on his McNuggets. He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Will, seemingly unsure if he should be annoyed or pleased when Will fussed over dock debris in Nico’s hair. From what Pax could see, there wasn’t any, but even he had to admit Will and Nico were too cute to interrupt with semantics.

                The whole time Nico ate and Will caught him up on what happened in the cavern, the Son of Hades shifted his gaze around the van, occasionally flicking to the back of Axel’s head. Pax tried to reassure himself. _It’s okay. He’s just looking at the dead people in our living space. Not through the Mist._

                “This is creepy,” Nico decided.

                “You’re saying something is creepy?” Will asked, clearly uncomfortable with the thought. Even Calex glanced over the passenger seat at them.

                “Normally, ghosts are very chatty,” Nico explained. “Not a lot of people can listen to them, so they like to talk when people like me are around. They’re all…” He glanced around, as though for one last affirmation. “Silent.”

                Then his eyes rested on Axel. _Oh Hades_ , Pax thought. _The dead people must be looking at my brother._

                Either Axel felt their gaze or he had a stroke, because he almost swerved into another car.

                They’d been talking about driving all the way to the safety of Camp Half-Blood, but that solidified the _sleep-on-a-safely-abandoned-road_ idea. Axel was too worn out to drive. Pax was too tired to drive and he—unlike Axel—was a shameless coward willing to admit to it. After a quick ask around to see if anyone else could drive stick—a courtesy really, no one was driving the Pax van but a Pax boy—they found out Calex was the only other one skilled in the finer art of manual. Pax trusted that silent, sulkfest to drive in his current state about as much as he’d trust Kronos to babysit.

                The Pax van was equipped with three specially crafted sleeping bags, a guest sleeping bag and a heavy blanket for particularly cold nights. Fortunately, Chiron had Calex, Euna, and Joey pack thin sleeping bags from the camp store.

                Nico ended up with Joey’s sleeping bag and Axel forfeited his to Will, claiming he’d be fine with the blanket. Will paused to examine the colorful decorations on the exterior: garish images of beasts, birds of prey, and serpents swarming around a man with black wings. That man flew through a gate of some kind of bone. _Ivory_ , Alabaster had told Pax while staining the bottom corner with the quote:

“at alter

fit fera, fit volucris, fit longo corpore serpens:  
hunc Icelon superi, mortale Phobetora vulgus

nominat.”[2]

                Alabaster had made them for Axel and Pax after they’d started going… questing for Kronos. Pax figured that was when Alabaster finally accepted them as friends instead of just chatty meat shields. Although Pax had shouted “nerd!” whenever Alabaster read the verse for he and Axel—Axel had never been able to read Latin or Ancient Greek and Alabaster hated his refusal to learn—Pax felt foolish for overlooking the names: _Phobetor_ and _Icelos_. He _should_ have recognized the god of nightmares from Axel’s sleeping bag.

                They gathered kindling and fallen branches from the woods along either side of the offshoot road. For everyone noting New York for New York City, Pax enjoyed seeing that most the state was covered for miles in nothing but small towns and wilderness. After their splash fight in the River Styx, everyone looked ready to melt into the peaceful, leaf-covered ground. They carried the girls out and put them by the stack of wood, so Hunnie and Baller wouldn’t end up tangled and trapped in their hair.

                Lighting the small fire was like shooting _Red Bull_ into Euna’s veins. She sat up, glanced around numbly, then asked, “Where is my sister?”

                Will went to check her over. He suggested they Iris Message Camp Half-Blood, that way Euna could talk to Joey, and they could smear it in Percy’s face that they did the mission without him and he _wasn’t_ all important. That last part was Pax’s add on, but he was sure everyone must share his sentiment.

They interrupted the end of the camp’s dinner, Chiron in mid-chomp on what Pax assumed was a fistful of hay at table twelve. Mr. D looked up at them with the least amount of interest he could manage. Merry waggled her eyebrows at them and sat up next to Pollux, probably trying to see Kally.

                Pax had to wonder—were Iris Messages two-dimensional? The droplets in a rainbow could reflect light at multiple angles, but the caller could only see in one direction.  While Chiron assured Euna that Joey was in the infirmary and expected to make a full recovery, Pax started to circle the image, finding the mythological physics of this a little skeptical.

                “Rachel is with us,” Will explained. “I’m surprised she’s still sleeping, but she seems okay.” Will told the full story. No one seemed surprised that Kally, Axel, and Pax had tagged along for the quest. They could hear unseen campers gasp at the mention of _the Python?!_ ” Will told them he had a dream of warning during a nap and immediately left with Nico and Mrs. O’Leary in hopes of intercepting the questers _before_ they got into Howe Cavern. No one asked exactly why Nico was nearby when Will was napping. Pax was going to make a sly comment but Mr. D yawned, shoved out his glass to have another satyr refill it, and asked, “Peter Johnson and the blond one aren’t with you?”

                Pax was annoyed to find the Iris Message faced him no matter what angle he approached from. When he registered what Dionysus said, he sat down beside Will.

                The fire flared in a sudden gust of wind. Pax had to shield his eyes when the heat washed over him. Such a small fire _shouldn’t_ be able to flare like that, but all he could think was, _I put Kally by the fire._

                Rachel was over there too, but really—Kally.

                Pax scrambled to try to reach her. The flame settled, but he had to make sure she hadn’t been burnt.

                What he saw made him freeze.

                A _thing_ crouched beside her. Golden fur sagged off the humanoid, emaciated monster. Its blood-soaked mane brushed against Kally’s forehead when it leaned down to sniff her.  Its hands had rotted to the bone with spotty patches of fur and thick obsidian claws the length of Pax’s darts. With one of those hands, it stroked her cheek. She mumbled in her sleep.

                The Leonis Caput gave him a ghastly grin, fangs glistening. “Got you, little cuz,” it purred.

                Pax felt his heartbeat again.

                Then he realized what else was wrong: no one but the monster was making a sound. He hadn’t heard anyone move since the fire flared—whether it be Mr. D’s groans of irritation or Calex being a priss. Judging by the nightmarish quality of his surroundings, he guessed they wouldn’t be there if he looked around.

                “You…” Pax said, “are completely underdressed. _Where_ is your bowtie? Everything looks scarier with a bowtie. And what is this cliché!” He talked faster, trying to sound confident and trying to hide that Phobetor had actually scared him. “Leaning menacingly over the heroine as she helplessly sleeps—pah! I could find something more original by reading Twilight fanfiction!”

                That smirk remained fixed on the Leonis Caput’s… face? The longer Pax looked at it, the more it looked like a helmet and not an actual feline expression. _Just like the real one_ , he thought. Pax kinda hoped Phobetor would come down with a bad case of conscilepsy and goop onto the ground. Except that would mean Kally would get drenched in a god-puddle. He already owed Axel two weeks of weapons cleaning duty. He didn’t need to spend his sleeping hour untangling putty from Kally’s hair.

                “Don’t worry—I’ll give them back,” Phobetor promised.

                “What?” Pax asked. “My honor and decency?”[3]

                Phobetor shook its mane slowly. The god seemed more confident—by confident, Pax meant terrifying since he supposed a confident god of nightmares would be a scary god. Pax really regretted showing Phobetor he could genuinely frighten him, even if for a second. The fear appeared to make Phobetor stronger and Pax wondered for a moment—if he were a god—what would strengthen him?

                “The two little heroes—the child of wisdom and the child of the sea.” Phobetor lifted his claw off Kally’s face to wave it absently from side to side. “I don’t even think they know they’re among the sleeping. They’ll wake soon. I just couldn’t have them interrupting our fun.”

                _Annabeth and Percy_. The thought shouldn’t have surprised Pax. After all, Morpheus put the entire city of Manhattan to sleep during the Battle of Manhattan. Demigods were harder to put into a trance, from what Morpheus said, but only two? Their nap was probably the best sleep that could be offered, other than Thanatos’s discount days.

                Still, Annabeth and Percy. Weren’t they supposed to be invulnerable or something? Percy was practically a minor god with his little hurricane pallor trick and defeating Ares… and going toe-to-toe with Kronos… but that probably didn’t affect his sleep habits.[4]

“Thanks… I guess,” Pax said. “I’ll log that away in the _information that should impress me_ folder.” 

                Phobetor was either deaf or unamused, because he continued as if Pax hadn’t said anything. “Well done though. Now, no hard feelings, but you didn’t make our contract binding…” Phobetor stood up to stretch. A chunk of hair fell off his skeletal structure. Pax made a face. “So you’ll be getting your nightmares back. Stick close to the Oracle. I hear she has something for you.”

                “Yea…” Pax said skeptically. “And you should shower. Because that,” he pointed to the clump of fur on the ground, “is disgusting.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

[1] Except when he looked in a mirror. Which he did often.

[2] From Ovid’s Book XI of Methamorphoses. Translation by Brookes More: “Another of Sleep's sons could imitate all kinds of animals; such as a wild beast or a flying bird, or even a serpent with its twisted shape; and that son, by the gods above was called Icelos—but the inhabitants of earth called him Phobetor.”

[3] <http://cdn.funnyisms.com/82d03705-a0b2-46e8-9c31-391446009bc7.jpg>

[4] However, he would still place money that his brother could kick the salt out of Percy in a fight.


	24. Ajax: I Agree with Deadpool: Anti-Heroes Have WAY More Fun (Wait—This Makes Me a Viallina? Not an Anti-Hero?!)

 

                When Pax woke up, Kally was leaning over him, which he found pleasantly backwards. The sun was setting behind her, making the auburn leaves on the trees glow around them and her own hair look fiery. She looked good, in an _I almost got eaten by a snake_ kind of way. There was a band aid stretched across her nose, from where the River Styx must have burned her.

At first, he was just happy she was the first thing he’d woken up to. In the relief of seeing her okay and not being dramatically threatened by the Leonis Caput, he almost forgot about the Percabeth thing and the events of Howe Cavern. Then he remembered everything with the whole “I told you that your dad attacked your mom” and he felt like a jerk.

                She hadn’t attacked him in his sleep, so progress in the right direction.

                Axel was at her side in a second. Pax was more excited to see Axel’s face animated with concern rather than the shame and anger he’d had earlier. “You just fell asleep. Did Phobetor—”

                “Yea, a huge congratulation of ‘thanks for helping me out! Here are you nightmares back’ and _you_ \--!” Pax pointed at Nico. The son of Hades sat beside Will. Apparently, their little chat with Dionysus must have ended awhile ago, seeing how settle everyone was around the campsite. “Couldn’t you have done some dreamception—inception and gotten me out of there?”

                Nico blinked and said numbly, “I could have, but I would have to go to sleep and I think I had a pretty good nap earlier… when you darted me.”

                _Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present Sassy McGoth pants_ , thought Pax. He opened his mouth to respond, but Axel lifted him up by one arm. “Help me find another sleeping bag for Kally.”

                Grumbling, Pax followed. Before Axel could badger him about Phobetor’s house call, he muttered, “Phobetor has Percabeth, he’s releasing him soon—also, my cousin is a jerk.”

                “Why is he a—Percabeth?” Axel interrupted himself. Now that Pax wasn’t in seeming peril, Axel’s previous inner turmoil was retaking its toll. His shoulders sagged and the bags under his eyes looked like they might sink to the floor.

                “I mean, it’s a better shipping name than Ancy. Everyone deserves a shipping name. I’ll bet ours is Paxel… or Axax or Ajaxel--“

                “Shut up Ajax; that is _really_ creepy,” Axel said. He picked up their last sleeping bag and tossed it at Pax. “At least we know why they couldn’t catch up to us. Did Phobetor say why he didn’t want them to… interfere?”

                Axel’s gaze was dark.

                “He was about as vague as your average helpful god,” Pax shrugged.

                Axel sighed and sat on one of the van’s benches. “Go on ahead to the others and give the sleeping bag to Kally. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

Pax frowned. Not even his inappropriate joke had pulled Axel out of his gloom but he figured he’d let Axel play the dark and mopey role for a few minutes before hereturning to tackle hug him.

                When he came back to the fire alone, everyone was decked out for bed.

                The girls had tucked Rachel into the guest sleeping bag. Euna sat on her own sleeping bag beside Rachel, staring at the fire and munching on—Pax winced—walnuts. Apparently, she’d bought those in Howe Cavern’s gift shop and instagrew two into trees when Python went to strike. That was super cool and all, but Pax still touched the EpiPen he kept on his utility belt when he saw her share some with Calex.

                She was suffering from that weird feeling you get when you’re forced to have your first kiss with some guy you barely know to appease his grandmother. Pax wasn’t really sure what that level of awkwardness was called, but for Aphrodite, it was probably called _schadenfreude_.[1]

                As Pax walked past, he overheard Euna mumble to Calex something that seemed to tide the Brit’s sadness over, “I heard you got me out of harm’s way and probably saved my life... Thanks.” 

                And Calex’s quiet response, “Least I could do after your brilliant tree maneuver.”

                It made Pax want to go, _Dawwww_!

               When Pax walked around to hand a sleep bag to Kally, he overheard a tense conversation between she and Nico over an unlabeled Happy Meal Toy.

                Nico held it carefully between his fingers, close to the firelight. “My guess is _Dice & Drakins_,” he said

                Kally shook her head. “That doesn’t exist in _Dice & Drakins.” _Maybe it was the exhaustion or the topic, but she responded with the calmness of someone who had been high-fived by the Fates for having such a lucky future.

                Nico’s scrutiny went from the toy to Kally. “You play?” A pause until she nodded. Then, he softly asked, “Do you also play _Mythomagic_?”

                She rolled her eyes. “Not every _Dice & Drakin_ player plays _Mythomagic_ … it looks really cool, but the rules look a little complex.”

                “They’re not any worse than _Dice & Drakin’s_ rules for spell casters.”

                Pax was waiting for the conversation to progress to, “You’re a nerd? I’m a nerd. We should date,” but Will didn’t seem worried. He was setting up his and Nico’s sleeping bags. When Will saw how Pax glanced between Kally and Nico, discomfort made him drop Nico’s.

                Will tapped Nico’s shoulder. “You. Me. Forest walk. Now.”

                Both Nico and Kally paled. Yea… Nico was screwed. The Child of Hades got up, “It’s not—”

                “ _Now_ ,” Will repeated. He didn’t sound angry, but seemed to realize their conversation was best left private.

                As they left, Pax froze, watching after.

                Had Pax broken Will’s calm without meaning to? Pax puffed his cheeks and popped them. He had felt the tug in his gut, but hadn’t intended to do anything. Not that he cared, he just didn’t understand _why_ he did it. Not knowing made him uncomfortable. And why had he stood there to eavesdrop? He was Ajax: the defiler of courtesy and polite dinner conversation. Casual eavesdropping wasn’t really his style, only active eavesdropping when spying.

                “Pax?” Kally greeted uncertainly.

                Pax jumped like Artemis had caught him watching one of her slumber parties.

                He tossed Kally the sleeping bag. He meant to say something teasing like _, “Can Will ground you for kissing his boyfriend?”_ Instead, he pointed at the sleeping bag. “See the shiny patch on the bottom?”

                Kally unfolded it. This one was simpler, covered with an illustration of the summer night sky. A dark crown subtly rested atop two closed eyes in the center. When Kally saw the bottom corner, she gasped.

                The material rippled and glistened. Stars brightened and dimmed, comets shot across the bottom of the sleeping bag, as though trying to escape the cologne de feet therein. Occasionally, the hint of a winking man appeared in the stars.

                Pax sat beside Kally. Although he’d spent many nights across from the sky mirage, he still loved staring at the handiwork. “Morpheus signed that himself,” he explained. “He was kind of a celebrity back… back at the camp we used to be in.” He stumbled over the end.  Quickly, he added, “That was Alabaster’s. I have Phanatos’ and Axel has Phobetor’s.” Whenever Pax saw his godly cuz again, he’d have to ask him for a quick John Hancock. Assuming Phobetor came as a boar and boars could write signatures, since he didn’t want to see the Leonis Caput again.

                “Supposedly that one grants the kindest dreams… and I figured you’d be the most prone to getting nightmares after…” Pax trailed off. It was like reminding someone they broke their leg. They already knew, and could only call you a jerk for the affirmation.

                Kally fingered the comets curiously. “Do you miss your… other camp? And… Alabaster?”

                Pax examined her face, but she kept her eyes firmly on the pattern. She… shouldn’t know about Camp Othrys. She only ever got that one explanation from Percy’s ecologically friendly bat-signal and that was in between Grover’s recycling binges with the trash in the Pax van. “I miss having a big family,” Pax confirmed. Internally, he added, _especially one dysfunctional enough to make me feel normal._

                “How did you know about my mom?” she asked. Her voice quavered.

                Pax felt like he’d killed the last unicorn. “I didn’t—” He swallowed. “—don’t. I’ve only ever seen one child of Apollo use that power before and Jack had to be really upset for it to work. It was the quickest w—I’m sorry Kally.”

                There was no real excuse. Sure, he could probably invent something. She was so new to the Greek world, a firm, _“Ares made me do it!”_ would work. But it didn’t feel right to talk his way out of this one.

                “Do you think he did?” she whispered. Kally hugged the sleeping bag, pressing her chin into the fabric.

                Pax shrugged. “You’d have to ask him.” Since gods were known for honesty about as well as they were known for their respect of mortals’ rights. _#half-blood and mortal lives matter._

                Her eyes glistened as they stared at the fire. “I should have felt shocked… or sick… but I felt… something worse. A feeling that didn’t feel like me.”

                The comment made Pax want to skinny dip in the River Styx. That might have been less scathing. When she glanced up at him with scared, wide eyes, he wondered how much distance they’d put between them and Howe Cavern.

                Pax fingered his darts, shifting his gaze to the fire. “If there’s one thing I’m good at doing, it is upsetting people,” he mumbled.

                Their camp site felt too quiet. No wind rustled the leaves around them. The flames in the center flickered straight upward. Pax was relieved that Euna and Calex were too busy ignoring each other to pay much attention to this conversation.

                “Thank you for giving me the Morpheus bag,” Kally said. When he looked at her, she didn’t look scared anymore.  She’d pulled the material away from her face to admire the winking man again. “I’m surprised you didn’t want Axel to use this one. I can believe that Python attacked us more than I believe Axel attacking a goddess. Do they have a history?”

                Pax should have felt thankful for the topic shift. He didn’t.

                “Oh yea,” he answered. “He—has been in the van an awfully long time—lemme go check up on him!”

 

* * *

 

 

                A clang thudded from the inside of the van and changed Pax’s speed from _leisurely-running-away-from-a-conversation_ to _actively-saving-brother-from-potential-assailant._ He had very specific gaits.

                The van wasn’t far from the campfire. They hadn’t had to look far to find a decent clearing, but enough trees were in the way to make Pax’s heart thump. By the time he’d reached the back doors, his dagger was in hand.

                Calex, Euna, and Kally heard it too. All three were up, armed with bow, glaive, and discus, respectively.

                When Pax opened the unlocked doors to find Axel collapsed on one of the benches, head in his hands, Pax leaned back to give the others a thumps up. _It’s okay. Not a monster. Just residual mental breakdown._

                He shut the door after he entered.

                A steel knife was implanted in the interior of the door, apparently the originator of the clang and Pax’s near-heart-attack.  

“I heard there’s a new online push to stop door violence,” Pax said. “You should be careful or the cyber satyrs might come after you.”

                Axel didn’t respond. He sat up and started to riffle through all of his pockets. Not finding what he wanted, he sighed and leaned his head back against the van wall, and the bolas on the wall.

                Pax tossed him a piece of gum before crouching to sit across from him. Pax tilted his head to one side. “Oh, what’s wrong Axel?” He tilted his head to the other side, dropped his voice an octave to mimic Axel’s, and righted his posture. “’I don’t want to talk about it Pax, but I’m going to sit here and look all stoic until I get over it.’”

                Once Axel was chewing the gum, his shoulders relaxed. A weak grin made his lips tremble. “Do I attain stoicism?” he asked hoarsely.

                Pax jerked a thumb at the embedded knife. “Not with doors.”

                Axel stared through Pax, like Pax had acquired a new knack for invisibility. “I just can’t stop… thinking about her,” he muttered. Since Pax assumed Axel wouldn’t need to announce he was thinking about Reyna, as Pax assumed Axel spent 90% of his day thinking about her as any madly in love, borderline-obsessed young man would, Pax guessed this referred to Aphrodite.

                Axel shook his head, eyes narrowing back to focus. “It’ll fade,” he snapped.     

                “Well, I’m here for when you don’t want to talk about it and instead decide to go extra hard during training tomorrow morning,” Pax offered. He grinned. Axel didn’t seem to notice.

                “Python was about to kill you,” Axel stated like Pax hadn’t realized he was dangling in the snake’s mouth.           

                Pax shrugged, looking at the floor. He’d have to resupply the back of the van with wrappers, dirty tissues, and laundry. He missed the chaotic mess that Hunnie and Baller could frolic in. “Mom likes her theatrics… to make it more convincing,” he muttered.  

                Axel shook his head, putting on his _I’m-the-older-brother-and-superior-officer_ voice. “No. We shouldn’t have trusted her in the first place. She was right about saving Kally, but we’re _not_ listening to her again. That was too dangerous.”

                “I feel really bad about making Kally feel like that,” Pax said. They had saved her from Tammi only to drag her into a losing fight against something with much bigger fangs and much less school spirit.

                “It saved all our lives,” Axel reminded him.

                While this was probably true, Pax felt sick. He’d used his godly ability a lot. Like his mother, he grew more powerful amidst battlefields and panic, but he didn’t like using that against a friend, especially not one who sought to confide in him, especially not Kally. A realization made Pax’s eyes go wide and his jaw make a dive for the floor.

                “I think I like her,” he said.

                The laughter that erupted from Axel was so boisterous, Pax thought he’d been zapped by Dionysus. Despite his prior disposition, Axel could barely catch his breath to say, “I love you Ajax, but you’re a numbskull!” The weight of Axel’s gloominess lifted momentarily.

                “You—you don’t like her, do you?” Pax asked, thinking about Aphrodite’s prophecy, _the person you love is going to fall in love with your best friend._

                Axel managed to contain himself, quieting down to a mere grin. Although it was at his expense, Pax was happy to see the expression. “I can’t fall in love with people as fast as you can.  Besides, even if I did, you know I agree with Alabaster on this—may the best man always win.”

                “That’s a lot easier to say when you’re 6 feet of awesome,” Pax said.  He mentally reviewed everything that happened with Kally over the last two days. In his fling with Flynn and with his ex-girlfriend and ex-boyfriend, everything had fallen into Pax’s lap, and uh—not always in a good way. Now…

                "How should I act around her?” Pax asked. “Should I pull your aloof and cool thing? Or should I go more for Nico’s brooding, angsty, dark and mysterious thing. She seems to like that.”

                Axel shook his head. “Just be yourself.”

                “Then I want to be honest with her—about everything.” Pax hadn’t realized it until he said it.

                The smile melted off Axel’s face. “Pax…” he warned.

                 But Pax was glad to have enough confidence for this. He was tired of being misleading with… everyone.  “Without the sell-her-soul-to-the-River-Styx-thing,” he clarified.

                Axel rose to a crouch. Pax had never been afraid of his brother, not like everyone else was, but he could see why people found the frenzied glint to his gaze unnerving. Axel stepped to the door, jerked the knife out, opened the door, and dropped the blade onto the grass. As though it were an accident, he hopped out, glanced around, gave someone a small wave, and hopped back in. Satisfied no one was eavesdropping, he closed the door behind him and sank back into his seat.

                “Do you think Kally will understand that we _had_ to kidnap Rachel because we needed a quest?” Axel asked softly. “Do you think she won’t tell Nico or Will when asked? It doesn’t matter that Python wasn’t _supposed_ to actually attack us. ”

                Pax mindlessly withdrew the golden apple from his pocket. There were two small bite marks in the top corner from when he turned into Jason in the morning. “Nico already suspects something is up with the funeral party we have going on in the van.”

                Speaking of which, Pax and Axel got changed in this van. The idea of dead people peeping on them made Pax want to shout a general, _“ew!”_

                “I don’t think the ghost of Octavian has been forthcoming about some demigod pretending to be him,” Axel reassured Pax. It didn’t. To convince Ella the Harpy that Octavian had been at camp, Pax pretended to be him. The members of Camp Half-Blood needed an easy scapegoat, so they wouldn’t suspect any of the new Seven, but Pax hated acting like that teddy bear murderer.

                Axel continued, “If Nico can talk to him at all. Something is obviously keeping… the dead… from…” Axel lost his voice.

                The emotion shot out like an electrical bolt. The bubble of rage, malice and anguish that Pax constantly sensed inside their chest of magical goodies shrank. It siphoned straight to Axel.

                He dug his nails into his scalp, clamped his eyes shut, and grunted.  

                Ever since they had stowed Hecate’s helms onto the chest, this started. It got worse with the nightmares. Pax had them sometimes. His most recent one happened in Dionysus’ Cabin, when he heard Castor’s name, when he thought about how the Leonis Caput stabbed Castor through the arm before crushing the defenseless half-blood’s skull in.  

                Pax’s weren’t as bad. He’d cry, but could force himself to look cheerful for Axel after a few minutes.

                His brother made a low, inhuman growl.

                Quickly, Pax began to babble, “Hey, so you have undead groupies—that’s no big deal—”

                “Get out,” the command was gravely, much deeper than Axel’s voice. 

                Pax trembled. “No. You don’t need to do this alone—”

                “Just like you don’t need to come with me to hunt Santiago,” the voice returned to Axel’s. Although the pain was still there, Pax could feel Axel struggling to contain it. As he had many times over the years, Pax wished he had the powers of Aphrodite, Eros, or Apollo: the ability to distract from, calm, or ease pain rather than solely create it.

                Axel let go of his face. His hands drooped to his knees, clutching them instead. Each breath was deep, prolonged, and rhythmic. Although he didn’t say it aloud, Pax could tell Axel was counting.  Once the intensity of Axel’s emotions settled from a whirlpool to rapids, he spoke again, “You’d be safe at Camp Half-Blood. Santiago won’t find you th—”

                “I’m like a stomach parasite. I’m not that easy to get rid of.”

                “That’s… disgusting, Ajax.” Axel sighed and closed his eyes. “Now go outside and flirt with and comfort Kally. Just don’t tell anyone our secrets while we’re still infiltrating them. And be yourself. You’re lovable in all your annoying persistence.”  

                “You sound as contradictory as a god.”

                “Get out Ajax.”

                Pax put his apple away and went to exit the van. He’d be back in five minutes to test how much his brother loved his annoying persistence.  

                As he jumped out, he couldn’t shake the heebie-jeebies. Camp Half-Blood accepted Chris and Matt with open arms. If Axel and Pax told Chiron what was going on—except for the whole kidnapping the Oracle thing—then Chiron should want to help, right? When Pax took his first step, the world wavered and Pax could hear Phobetor’s hiss, _“You don't have anyone you can trust... not even your own brother._ "  

 

* * *

 

 

 

[1] The pleasure someone experiences at seeing the misfortune of another. Thank you Germans for giving us such an awesome word.


	25. Kalypso: Watching a Train Wreck in High Definition Part I

Twenty-Five: Kalypso

Watching a Train Wreck in High Definition Part I

 

            When Will walked out of the forest, he was laughing so hard, he startled Kally.

There had been a lot to take in over the last 48 hours. She found out that the darkness in her nightmares had been a very real snake, she’d faced off said snake with some power she didn’t know possible, her mother had either cheated on her dad with a god, or was attacked by a god, and Kally needed to ask either her mother or a god about that—both of which sounded as appealing as inviting Python to Petco to shop for a hamster.

            That’s why, when her newly found half-brother came over to ruffle Kally’s hair and laugh-whisper, “I’m sorry, but… Honey… he gay,”[1] into her ear, Kally handled her embarrassment with dignity and pride.

            She withheld any tears and didn’t hit him. Instead, she exhaled, “I figured that out, Will… Thanks.”

            This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to Kally. She’d gotten crushes on several different guys in the drama department that either ended up dating a lead actress or didn’t like women at all. At least with Nico, she’d only known him for two days. She’d get over it and move on.

            “I didn’t realize you liked him like that or I might have hinted at it sooner,” Will said, sitting down beside her.

            Kally decided she needed to use her newly found Apollo powers to write a song called, “Drop the Subject” that magically made people avoid this kind of confrontation.

            Nico sulked out of the forest a few paces behind. His skin looked like Will had conjured the sun right in his face and held it there for three hours. It probably matched Kally’s redness.

            When he approached them, he stared off to the side. Like nothing had happened, he asked, “Did you want to learn how to play _Mythomagic_? Will and I have decks on us and Will wanted me to review the rules with him.”

            Will winked at Kally. She couldn’t tell if this was cruelty or a peace treaty. Until proven otherwise, she decided it was easier to pray for the latter.

          

* * *

 

            Nico was right: the rules were about as complicated as a spell caster in _Dice & Drakins_. While she was nowhere near as capable as Nico, in no time at all she was crushing Will.

            Calex kept nervously glancing at the Pax van. After they’d heard that little thump that Pax attributed to Axel tripping over a misplaced weapon—“ _hey, it happens_ ”—Calex seemed to focus his anxiety on that. Then he’d taken his bow to do a quick patrol around their campsite, claiming he needed to quiet his nerves.

            Everyone but Euna and Rachel seemed apprehensive, as one was dozing and the other still unconscious.  Once Pax coaxed Axel out of the van and Axel suggested they take turns watching the camp, everyone glanced around with the same skepticism of, “ _we’re supposed to sleep?_ ”

            “We should do a sing-along. It’s tradition,” Will suggested, grinning.

            Axel stared at him, dubious. “You do _sing-alongs_ at Camp Half-Blood?” he asked. “ _That’s_ how you train?”

            “It’s how we have fun and praise the gods,” Will said, folding his arms and raising his chin.

            After their encounter with Aphrodite, Kally guessed a sing-along for the gods was towards the bottom of Axel’s to-do list, at most, under a staring contest with Medusa.

            “We could tell ghost stories instead!” Pax blurted. “That’s what my other brother used to do when I couldn’t sleep.”

            “I’ve got a good one,” Nico supported with a small smile.

            Will looked horrified and Kally suddenly found the irony in Nico’s and Will’s relationship.

            Axel sighed. “Pax, Kouta did that so you’d stop coming to him with nightmares.”

            Pax shot him a devil grin. “It worked, right?”

            Axel shook his head and Kally realized to whom Pax went with his nightmares now.

            They set up watch before Nico started his story. Kally volunteered to go right after story time, recognizing she wouldn’t be able to sleep immediately. They huddled around the fire, each in their separate sleeping bag. Calex joined them and Euna sat up to listen. Rachel still slept soundly.

            Although she understood they were all packed together for heat, Kally suddenly became aware of how close she would be sleeping to boys. She’d managed okay in Cabin Seven. Knowing they were half-siblings seemed to make it unimportant. Now though, she blushed to realize Pax had sat down beside her. Not that it mattered, but her mother would kill her if she ever found out.

            Will was on her other side, frowning. The story hadn’t even started yet, but she was pretty sure he’d end up grabbing both her and Nico’s hands before the end.

            Nico took one of their flashlights and turned it on just under his chin. The shadows on his face made him look even more spectral.

            “The dead walk freely in New Rome,” Nico began in a soft voice, one that enticed them to lean closer. Kally had spent the last two Halloweens with the drama department telling scary stories. She could already tell this was going to be good.

            “You can find many past praetors and warriors. However, not all spirits make it back home nor do they pass on to meet judgment. There is a rumor about why so few did during the Second Titan War.

            “Before the war started, Percy Jackson killed the minotaur. Kronos explored the Labyrinth to find a back entrance to Camp Half-Blood. Without the minotaur, he feared that the half-bloods would use the Labyrinth the same way—to sneak into his camp--as they eventually did. While the minotaur was still reforming in the depth of… of…”

            “Tartarus,” Calex supplied.

            Nico swallowed and continued, “Kronos saw fit to make a new Monster of the Labyrinth, one that would keep Camp Jupiter’s scouts from getting too close.”

            Kally felt something tickle her hand. She glanced down to find Pax lacing his fingers with hers. By now, she should have been used to it, but usually he just grabbed her wrist or around her hand to drag her somewhere, not entwining their fingers while they were sitting. Nothing scary had happened in the story yet. If he was going to pretend to be scared, he better expect her to tease him.

            Then she felt how much he was shaking. Pax looked pale and his eyes were wide. His other hand had a smoke bomb halfway out of his utility belt.

            Behind him, Axel had crossed his arms, but Kally could see where he’d casually withdrawn a smoke bomb from his pocket.

            “This monster,” Nico said, “they called the Leonis Caput.”

            Kally stiffened.

            “Exactly as it sounds, except—instead of a bull’s head, like the minotaur—this one had the upper torso of a lion as the name dictates. Also unlike the minotaur, who was born a monster and treated as one from birth, this creature was created with the intelligence and creativity of a human.

            “Whenever Kronos’ army captured a Roman soldier, they would give the Roman a choice of one celestial weapon. Let’s make it a female warrior for this retelling. They would throw her into part of the Labyrinth underneath an arena that was as dark as Nyx. She would stumble onto bones and decaying bodies in the blackness. From above, the Leonis Caput’s keeper would list off the names of the dead scattered around them, fallen comrades and the brethren. Then they would request the soldier’s name to add onto the list of the dead.

            “Romans are proud. Any good Roman would state their name and ranking. The keeper would announce a ten second head start.”

            Nico did the full countdown. With each number, she could feel Pax flinch. His fingers were slick with cold sweat. She was scared his grip might slip and he’d set off his smoke bomb, which would both be suspicious and scare everyone.

            Carefully, she withdrew her hand from his. Pax’s eyes broke contact with Nico to look at her, switching from panicked horror to tempered concern. Kally reached across Pax’s lap, peeling his opposite hand from the smoke bomb. He resisted, but gradually let her lace her fingers with that hand instead. This left her awkwardly stretched but at least he wouldn—

            Pax scooted closer and a few inches behind, so he could wrap his now-free hand gently around her waist and drop his chin onto her shoulder.

            Never an unopportunistic moment.

            The trembles shook his whole body. She could feel the quickened thud of his heartbeat through his neck.

            “—two—one. And the keeper would call, ‘Ready or not, here he comes’ before opening the Leonis Caput’s cage.

            “Then the monster would begin its hunt. Like a proper cat, it would toy, approaching slowly. Some even say it would sing to its prey as it stalked. The Roman would eventually be found in the darkness and once she was, the worst discovery was made: her weapon could do nothing to hurt the monster. Some say no weapon could hurt it. So the Roman would meet—not the death of a warrior—but the death of a hunted animal, without real weapon or chance, screaming for the amusement of Kronos’ army as the Leonis Caput ripped off her flesh and discarded the carcass in the mass grave of half-eaten Romans.

            “But… the worst part of this tale has yet to come,” Nico leaned closer to the firelight. “For the Leonis Caput and its keeper were never found. The Romans believe, after the Labyrinth collapsed, they escaped into the daylight to continue the hunt, seeking out half-bloods like you or me. There are many monsters we must fear, but not as many with the patience of the cat, the intelligence and innovation of a half-blood, and the seeming invulnerability of a god. So as you go on your way, be wary. He and his keeper are still out there, following the children of the gods, and followed,” Nico’s eyes connected with Axel’s, “by the ghosts of those he murdered.”

            A _crack_ erupted nearby.

            Both Pax and Will shrieked. Kally thought Pax might squeeze the life out of her with the arm he had around her waist.

            Everyone glanced over toward Euna to find where the sound had come from. She stared back at them, broken walnut shell in hand. She popped the nut into her mouth and shrugged.

            Kally turned to glance at Pax skeptically.

            “What?” he snapped. “Walnuts are frightening.”

            “Nico!” Will cried, grabbing his… boyfriend’s? Were they official? His Sexy Goth Prince’s hand. “Did you have to tell that one? I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight—oh—you laugh now. You won’t be laughing when I wake you up to do sun salutations with me in the morning!”

            “That was indeed a scary story, child of Hades,” Axel agreed. He’d been still since he grabbed his smoke bomb. From what Kally could see, he’d slipped it back into his pocket.  Axel’s gaze was uncomfortably steady, a slight smile tilting his lips. “The Romans have quite the imagination.”

            As Axel said it, she wondered how much of the story was fabricated. The knowing glint to his eyes said it was false. The thud of Pax’s heart as he curled her more into his lap said it was true—or that Pax scared easy, as he tended to. Either way she’d never look at the feline helmet in the van the same.

            She also had to wonder what its inscription meant:   

_XXVII pro leonis caput_

_Twenty-Seven for the Leonis Caput_

            Twenty-seven… dead Romans?

 

* * *

 

 

            The story scared Kally more than she was willing to admit. Sitting there listening amongst a group of other heroes—that had been easy, regardless of the fact that one could kill foliage by being embarrassed at it. Gods forbid what he could do when he was actually mad.

While that had been easy, thinking over the types of monsters in the Greek world while patrolling alone in the dark—yea… she should have just watched _The Conjuring_ and locked herself in a dark room.

            Soon after the story, Axel told them all to go to bed, like a good annoyed older brother.

            Although she was afraid, she was glad she had first watch. There was a lot to think about: about the Leonis Caput, about how relieved she felt that Nico was off limits, about how much better he’d be as a Mythomagic friend, about how Pax had pulled her against him like it was natural and given her that stupid devil’s grin when she shoved him away, about how much Merry would squeal and make her life a Field of Punishment when she updated her on everything. 

            All of this was coursing through her head. She munched on the walnuts Euna had given her and strolled near their campsite.

            The moon barely smiled between the tree branches, mocking her fear. There wasn’t an autumn breeze as she’d expected, but she still pulled Pax’s duster closed around her neck. He’d slipped it around her shoulders before curling into his Phanatos sleeping bag, reminding her “five Reese Sticks and four drachma in counting Cyclopes.”

            The confusion she felt about Pax was an easy distraction. It almost distracted her from Python’s promise to return and thoughts of her mother.

            “Kally.”

            The call came from right behind her.

            Kally jumped, dropping all her nuts, about to smash her discus into—

            “Nico!” she snapped. “Don’t do that!”

            The son of Hades shrugged. He finished chewing down some kind of food—maybe a final McNugget or a fruit or walnut—and tossed the remnants into the woods. He gave her his best “I’m not sorry and I know it” by not acknowledging her comment. “You don’t need to literally walk around the entire time. You’ll just exhaust yourself.”

            Looking at Nico, Kally savored how much more at ease she was, knowing he was dating her brother. He looked his usual gloomy self, possibly slouching more, though she suspected that was from exhaustion. “Oh,” she said, glancing around for somewhere to sit. Not finding an obvious spot, she stood there, thinking she must look as suave as a cat with its paws stuck in carpeting.

            Nico leaned against a tree. “Did Pax or Axel say how they found you?” he asked.

            “Pax’s mother,” Kally said. The question seemed completely random.

            “So Pax does know who she is,” Nico inferred. He dipped his chin down, casting further shadows over his eyes so he looked like a living skeleton. “Who is she?”

            Kally choked. She hadn’t meant to prove that Pax had lied about his parentage. Clearly, he was ashamed of whoever his mother was, but—after meeting two gods—she couldn’t blame him. “I don’t know,” she mumbled quickly.

            He tilted his head to the side. “Did you notice anything odd in their vehicle?”

            Her heart thudded. The Leonis Caput helmet, the—Kally almost gasped at the realization—the _Silver-Tongued Snake_ helmet, the fliers, the arrows and darts coated with liquid from the River Lethe and Acheron: she’d never gotten to ask the Pax brothers about any of it. When they got back to camp and had some alone time, she was going to sit both of them down and not take half-answers as answers. 

            A moment passed before she remembered Nico had asked her a question. “An abnormal amount of wrappers and weasels,” she whispered.

            “Weasels?” he repeated. Kally couldn’t see his expression, but she could tell she’d said something wrong. “Lou Ellen mentioned weasels. Apparently, Axel could see right through a daughter of Hecate’s Mist. He must be pretty powerful at controlling it himself.”

            There was another long pause. Kally could feel Nico’s mad eyes boring into her skin.

            “You don’t need to protect them,” Nico said softly. “We won’t hurt them. We just want to keep everyone… safe.”

            Fortunately, the night was so dark, Kally didn’t need to fear looking him in the eyes when she said, “I’m not trying to protect them.”

            She was sure he knew she was lying, but after a few more seconds, Nico slumped further against the tree. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said, sounding genuinely relieved. Although he maintained the indifferent and gloomy demeanor, Kally got the vibe he didn’t like playing investigator.

            He started to push off the tree.

            “Wait!” she called, immediately regretting it. Especially with everything going on, with Will and with Python, she should let it drop, but Kally wanted to talk to _someone_ before they got back to camp.

            Nico’s lip twitched into a worried frown. He waited.

            “Do you feel like you belong at Camp Half-Blood?” Kally blurted, “Or… did you feel that way at first?”

            He glanced to their campsite, down at his hands, then back up to Kally. Slowly, almost cautiously, he took a seat beside her, pulling his legs against his chest and tucking his chin against his knees.

            At his expectant stare, she sat down beside him. The ground was dry. Leaves crumbled under her fingers when she balanced herself.

            “Look at my parentage,” he finally said, “Not exactly the deity the other gods want as the life of their party.”

            If Pax were here, he would have jumped on Hades being “the life of the party” in a heartbeat. She resisted the urge to make a comment.

            Nico shrugged. “Plus, keeping secrets separates you a lot.” From the distant glint to his eyes, she assumed that was not aimed at her. Thinking about whatever secrets a child of Hades kept—that made her shudder. 

            His hands were bright white against his jeans as he gripped his legs. “But you gotta learn to trust people, right? And make a new family. A good one that won’t… disappear.”

            _Does he still have family_? Kally hadn’t even considered the possibility. Something had happened with her mother and Apollo and she wasn’t sure she’d be welcomed home if she asked about it, but she still had a family.

            “What happens if I don’t have a home to go back to after this weekend?” she asked quietly, hoping he’d say what he did.

            Nico sighed.  He stretched his legs out and rested his hands behind him so he could lean back. “There are year-rounders at camp. Travis and Connor are year-rounders. So are Matt and Chris.”

            “Do you have a family to go home to?”

            “The most important part of my family is here.” He gestured towards the camp with his chin, then glanced back over to Kally. “Other than that it’s…. complicated.”

            Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, the trauma, the want to hear about another half-blood’s family, or the fact that she’d cheated death by becoming a personal glowstick, but she said, “If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to, but if you’re just scared of me telling the others… I promise I won’t—” She laughed nervously. “—on the River Styx and everything.”

            “Really?” Nico sounded surprised, leaning closer to examine her face. “You won’t tell people my secrets?”

            Dread clenched Kally’s stomach. She tried to fight it off. This was a trusted member of Camp Half-Blood and her brother’s boyfriend. Despite her internal counseling, her gut was tugging at her spinal column with a polite, “Excuse me brain, but you just screwed us all.”

            “So… what does swearing on the River Styx do anyway?” she asked.

            A smile lighted Nico’s lips. “If the promise is broken, it just damns you soul to forever serve Orcus, a nasty god of punishment. So, no biggie.” The cadence of his speech altered and Kally wondered if she was the only one affected by sleep deprivation.

            He turned a little more to face her. “My other siblings are with my dad…”

_They must have died_ , Kally realized with a flutter of horror.

            Nico swallowed hard. A sad laugh echoed into the darkness. “I think you’ve proven yourself plenty trustworthy. Just promise me you won’t…” Kally flinched when he touched her hair. “…won’t treat me differently after I tell you this.”

 

* * *

 

 

[1] <https://twitter.com/camphaflblood/status/389480849089253376>      


	26. Ajax : Watching a Train Wreck in High Definition Slow Motion Part II

 

 

             Once upon a time, a long, long  time ago--three years ago to be exact—in a land far, far away—also known as Camp Othrys—Pax had been practicing his Jason Grace impersonation so he could infiltrate New Rome for a recon mission. He made a major mistake: after a conversation with Alabaster, he forgot who he was.

Not in the fun and fancy existential way. He knew he was Ajax Pax. That was exactly the problem. After moving around as Jason Grace for an hour, he forgot that he looked like him. When the physical son of Zeus walked into a war meeting between Axel, Luke, and Krios like he owned the place… Pax was pretty sure he made at least one of them need a change of pants from seeing a Roman soldier bypass their defenses undetected. After Krios almost killed him, he promised himself he’d never make that mistake again.

            When Pax went to touch Kally’s hair, he didn’t realize he’d broken a promise to himself until later, until it was too late. Normally, there were dead giveaways—like the length of hair or a different style of dress. But Pax’s hair was about the right length, and dangled black in his eyes. The aviator jacket felt a lot like Axel’s army surplus jacket.

His original intention was to make sure Kally wouldn’t tattle any of their secrets to someone in Camp Half-Blood. She’d just proven she wouldn’t. Up until she’d shouted, “Wait!” he’d been internally repeating, _I am Nico Di Angelo, Son of Hades and Angst Supreme,_ so his ADHD wouldn’t kick in and make him forget he _wasn’t_ Ajax Pax. Right now, all he could focus on was how pretty Kally’s hair looked in the sparse moonlight and how badly he wanted to tell her everything.

            He didn’t mean to make her flinch. Quickly, he retracted his hand.

            “Mom wasn’t there,” he started, refusing to be discouraged. “Dad wasn’t at first either. We were raised… we were raised by my grandma, _chiich,_ for awhile. She and granddad didn’t have a lot of money though so my uncle and… one of my brother’s moms took us in. Uncle Frasco was awesome….”

            Pax didn’t know if he remembered it right, but he’d constructed a story that he told Lapis and Hiro: Uncle Frasco showed up to their hovel in the Mopan sector of Southern Belize, painted brightly and laughing. He’d given them candy and asked them to run away to the circus—and what smart kid doesn’t accept candy and run away to the circus?

            The smile trembled on Pax’s face. He knew he was still looking at Kally, but he didn’t see her. All he could think of was how happy Uncle Frasco always was. Axel and Kouta swiped some stuffed animals from the fair vendors to give to Pax, Hiro and Lapis. One of Pax’s last memories of the circus was Uncle Frasco and Auntie Nilley trying not to laugh as they chased Axel and Kouta around the grounds.

            “Dad decided he wanted us back,” Pax recited. “So he beat Uncle Frasco to death. We tried to stop him, but we were too little.”

            Kally’s mouth dropped open. He barely noticed the motion.

            That was the first time he’d heard Axel scream. Kouta froze up, too scared to try anything with Santiago’s men there. Axel must have been, what? Thirteen or so? It was like shooting a BB gun at a tank. Axel may have been an excellent fighter, even as a kid, but one hit from Dad’s cane took him out of commission for a week.

            Pax shook his head. Now was when he was supposed to talk about running away to Camp Othrys, how his mother had promised it would be better there. One look at Kally’s face sealed his mouth.

            She looked horrified.

            “I—I’m sorry Kally,” he said. “I didn’t mean to ruin the mood.”

            Stories like that were common at Camp Othrys. Domestic abuse, violence, death— _with a Boreas weather forecast at 10:00 AM central time_! They were the unwanted demigods with labels like, _too defective to return to sender_ and when that didn’t work, the Olympians kinda hoped they would go away when ignored long enough.

            Alabaster had been uncomfortable after Pax told him. Alabaster used his fancy psychology terms to say Pax coped by pretending it never happened. Pax knew it happened. He couldn’t dwell on it. That was the day his siblings had stopped smiling. He’d had to do all the smiling for everyone. He had to learn to talk quickly to make sure Santiago’s men didn’t beat Lapis for acting out or Hiro for going mute.

            Pax touched Kally’s hand. She didn’t withdraw. Instead, she clasped his hand back, eyes teary. “That’s horrible,” she said.

            “Yup,” he affirmed. “It kinda sucked.”

            There wasn’t really an easy way to change the subject from awful traumatic event to something a little lighter, so Pax decided he’d just enjoy holding her hand.

            Kally took in a shaky breath, rubbing at her eyes with her free hand. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be the one apologizing—I promised I wouldn’t treat you differently and I meant it. I’ve just never heard about that… happening to someone in real life.”

            “Is it that obvious how uncomfortable your sympathy makes me?” he teased weakly.

            The tilt of her head said, _“Yes Pax, why would you ever tell me that?”_

            Pax smiled. Despite how hard she failed at trying to look unbothered, he appreciated the attempt. It was endearing. “That’s okay,” he said. “Do you wanna talk about bunnies and sunshine and weasels or other awesome things to take your mind off of it?”

            He realized there was something else that might take her mind off it. He shouldn’t. Especially not after telling her that. This wasn’t exactly the best transition and he didn’t want her to do anything out of pity…

            But Pax was already leaning forward.

            “That’s funny,” Kally said, glancing back to the campsite. “That sounds like something Pax would sa—”

            Pax kissed her.

            He didn’t register her comment until he’d already slipped a hand into her hair.

            A tingling sensation spread from his lips to his face at the touch of her skin.

            Kally shoved him off. “Nico!  Wha—Will—and—what are you—”

            “Nico?” Pax repeated in confusion.

            In the amount of time it took him to realize the mistake he made was as dumb as winking at a drunk Zeus, Pax had puffed out his cheeks and popped them. Normally, he never did this action when he looked like someone else. He was a great actor. But he didn’t _want_ to be Nico. Panic swelled in his chest when he realized he _was_ Nico right now and _Nico_ had definitely just kissed her.

            This—apparently—was the best option to get Kally _more_ upset. Realization lit up her eyes when he popped his cheeks. Her dismay switched to anger. That was an improvement… right?

            She hit him in the diaphragm.

            No matter how badly this ended, Pax at least learned one useful piece of information during this encounter: Kally could probably take care of herself in a dark alley.

            “Pax!” she shouted. “Y-you snake! It was you this whol—you jerk! You—you! Why—”

            A lump formed in Pax’s throat. His thoughts whirled, trying to find a way out of this. The most intelligent stream of consciousness he could muster was, _stupid! Stupid! Stupid!_

            “I didn’t mean—I just needed to make sure you weren’t going to rat us out to the Greek—”

            “You could have trusted me!”

            “I had to make sure—Axel said—”

            “Augh!“ she howled in disgust. Kally jumped up onto her feet, her fists balled. “And you made up all that stuff about Nico’s past? Wh—”

            “I didn’t make up—“

            When Pax rose beside her, trying to ignore the pain in his gut and ready to catch her hand in an act of dramatics worthy of a bad vampire romance, a wave of dizziness almost downed him. Nausea rolled up from deep in his stomach, only stopping because his throat had tightened enough to contain the grossest of vomit.

            Although Pax wanted to stand up straight and face Kally like a proper shameful scumbag, he felt his hands sink to his knees—well, Nico’s knees but he didn’t feel the mood to get into semantics.

            Kally sounded near tears, “And to think I might l—”

            “Kally,” Pax interrupted, “What were you eating before this?”

            “What?! Why does it matter!?”

            Pax licked his lips, trying to remember if Kally tasted salty. Frantically, he began to pat down his pockets and waist with one hand. All he found was a Stygian iron sword, a pack of Mythomagic cards, and—thank to the God of Irony and Cruel Timing—an _Almond Joy_ bar.

            “I need an EpiPen,” he said. Now he could tell, that tingling sensation he felt when he kissed Kally—yea, that was the start of hives, not the adorable rush of love, or at least not _only_ the adorable rush of love. Everything was already dark, but the world started to feel like it was tunneling. He tried not to panic more, though the idea was starting to sound really appealing.

            “I’m not falling for that Pax!” Although he couldn’t see her, he could envision Kally folding her arms. “Just morph back!”   

            He shook his head, gasping. “I can’t—I ate the whole apple… can’t shift back…”

            For a heartbeat, he thought Kally would storm off. She’d leave him there, rightfully thinking he was a liar.

            Then he felt Kally’s arm slip around his waist. She hefted up, half-dragging, half-directing him towards camp. Each step felt like they were balancing on an active sand sifter. Pax’s panic decided now was a good time to strike, when he was defenseless. The weakness, heat, dizziness, and nausea—it made each stumble of progress slower.

            Pax didn’t realize Kally was shouting for Axel until he saw commotion from the camp. She’d been shouting some unpleasant curses that her priest would certainly berate her for, but figures moved in front of the fire to show she’d been calling for help too.

            By the time Axel lifted him from Kally’s arms to put him on the ground, the world was fuzzy. Pax contributed that more to the fear than the anaphylactic shock, a fun way to try to calm himself down.

            Axel was saying something soothing. When the needle jammed into Pax’s thigh, he didn’t cry out. Like the last time, it didn’t hurt. Maybe it was the adrenaline or the fact that Axel was holding his shoulder. He knew it would be sore in a few hours, that he’d get a bruise, but that would mean he was alive.

            Someone else—Will?—lifted Pax’s knees. Normally Axel did this—it supposedly made everything work faster, though Pax thought it was weird that Will was touching him.

            Breath came easier. Pax stared at the constellations in the sky and rubbed the site of injection. His face wasn’t tingling anymore. He still felt weak and a little nauseous, but the impending fear of death had gone away.

            Pax wasn’t sure how long he lay before he checked back into the conversation and realized that Will was holding his hand.

            “—but he’s not allergic to walnuts,” Will said.

            Axel was on Pax’s other side, still holding his shoulder. Clearly, his older brother wasn’t sure why Kally had been calling for help, for he had sloppily strapped a few daggers and swords on his torso. Over his shoulder, Pax could see Kally standing by the fire, hugging herself with one hand and covering her mouth with the other. If he could get his voice to work and didn’t still feel guilty, he might have teased, “ _You’re killing me here.”_

            When he glanced down, he could see Calex and Euna sitting on their sleeping bags. Calex had his bow strung and must have just crouched back down. Euna looked like she just woke up. Rachel, of course, was sleeping.

            There was an important person missing here.

            Once Axel realized Pax was conscious and breathing normally—Pax considered faking a faint a little too late—Axel sighed. “You did _literally_ the opposite of what I told you to do,” he said.

            Will looked confused and opened his mouth when Nico Di Angelo burst from the woods and back onto the campsite. His Stygian iron sword was drawn. Sweat soaked his brow, like he’d run all the way to McDonalds and back for a midnight snack.

            “I was just trying to shadow messaging Hazel—what happen…” his voice faded when he saw Will holding Pax’s hand. Nico stared, apparently unable to comprehend.

            Will blinked. Slowly, he glanced from the dumbfounded Nico at the edge of camp to the _Nicax: Version 2.0_ on the ground. A derpy grin spread on his face.

            “Thank you Morpheus?” Will guessed.

            Neither Kally nor Axel seemed willing to throw in an explanation. Will kept glancing back and forth between the two of them.   

            Pax cleared his throat, recognizing he had to take responsibly for his actions. He said, “I’ve come with a message from the future—”

            Axel pinched his ear.

            “ _Ay! Ay! Ay!”_ Pax cried, weakly pawing to free his ear.

            “You’re… Pax,” Nico guessed, still stunned.

            Will immediately dropped Pax’s hand. “You’re Pax?” he demanded. “Talk. Now.”

 

* * *

 

 

            He gave away enough information to make him feel like the most impoverished of information brokers. “Every morning, since I left home—” Euphemisms, yay! “—a golden apple appears in my pocket. Whenever I bite into it, I can turn into someone that I have seen before. The timeframe that I stay that person is dependent on how many bites I take. Sometimes I…” he wanted to say, “ _I forget_ ,” but one look at Kally showed that would do nothing. She looked betrayed. Her hand hadn’t strayed from her lips.

            Axel sighed. This could have ruined everything and they both knew it. From what they’d gathered of Nico, he wasn’t stupid and was incredibly suspicious. It would only be a matter of time before he put it together: that Pax could turn into Octavian. But they wouldn’t be able to figure out how Axel took Rachel to Howe Cavern and got back in such a short time without being seen. The only person who might even guess it was Rachel herself and she was still doing the best try-out for _Sleeping Beauty_ Pax had ever witnessed.

            Pax kept glancing at Kally while explaining things to her, Will, Nico, and Calex. Euna had opted to go straight back to sleep.

            “What were you doing as Nico?” Will’s voice was tight.

            “He was trying to figure out if I liked him,” Kally croaked.

            Pax blinked. He and Axel both glanced over to Kally like she’d been granted the Midas Touch. That hand covered her mouth, like it was symbolic or something, but her words had been clear. She was _still_ covering for them.

            Then and there, Pax made a silent oath that he’d tell her everything, whether or not she wanted to hear it, kinda like what he’d heard about High School Sex Ed classes. Pax realized, with a jolt of nausea, that it didn’t matter if he told her. She’d sworn to him on the River Styx that she wouldn’t tell his secrets. Did that work under false pretenses? Was there a way he could release her from that oath? The last thing he wanted was for her soul to be damned to Orcus.

            As a secondary consolation prize, he also vowed to steal her all the flowers in Demeter’s garden, both summer and winter gardens, but that would have to happen another day when he’d found out how to properly apologize for being a scumbag.

            Axel grunted. He rose and walked over to Kally, touching her shoulder to direct her away from the conversation. Pax could tell he wanted to assure her—a sort of reward for not spilling the stupid stuff Pax had said. He could envision the conversation now: “yes, Pax has been thoughtless enough to forget who he looks like before. No, there probably wasn’t any malintentions, he’s just paranoid. Yes, he does work out.”

Pax watched the way Axel’s hand fell to the small of Kally’s back and thought about Aphrodite’s prophecy.

            Pax knew Kally deserved better than Kronos’s Silver-Tongued Snake. And Axel deserved to be happy with someone he could actually be with, instead of some prissy Roman praetor. In a shaky breath, Pax decided he would be happy when it happened. Actually happy. They’d make a cute couple and produce annoyingly attractive children.

            He was more genuinely happy when Will punched him in the face. _Someone_ needed to do it.

            The motion was quick. One second he’d been babbling, “Uh—yea—I pretended to be Nico to see if Kally—uh—had a nice little bout with Cupid’s arrow—”

The next thing he knew, her blond, fluffy half-brother had him pinned to the ground, shouting the most hackneyed, “Stay away from my sister” and “Don’t ever pretend to be my boyfriend again!” type lines. _Really_ , Pax thought, _be more original. Have more bravado. For a child of Apollo, you lack a poetic voice._

            Nico dragged Will off. Fortunately, he was too bewildered to decide if Pax needed a bludgeoning.

            What really saved Pax was something that horrified him.

            “Uh, guys, Rachel doesn’t look well.”

            No one expected Euna to still be awake. The daughter of Demeter had a hand to Rachel’s face. The Oracle was shivering, face coated in sweat.

            Will forgot Pax and went to her side immediately. He pressed his hands to either side of her head, singing quietly. After a few minutes, he brought Kally—still distraught, but calmer after Axel’s coaxing—to sing. Although Pax and Axel rarely were injured during fights, their guardian, Jack, used to sing their wounds fixed. Normally, it took no more than a minute.

            Nothing changed in Rachel. Her face was contorted in what looked like pain.

            Will’s singing cracked.

            Nico put a hand on his shoulder.

            Pax was starting to worry that his mother had been more than her usual level of misleading about this ordeal. She’d told Pax that picking up Kally would grant he and his brother a _look-at-me-I’m-a-good-guy_ ticket into Camp Half-Blood. She’d instructed him on how to fabricate a quest—though apparently a real one by Phobetor’s and Apollo’s standards—to gain the trust of the Greek half-bloods. Her instructions never came with a _how-to-save-sick-Oracle_ guide. He and Axel had promised each other: no more death. Pax refused to believe he’d win the trust of the Greeks in exchange for this girl’s life. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Author’s comment: Added goodie. This is a picture I had commissioned of Pax turning into Nico (SpaghettiNinja did a great job!):  <http://jflashandclash.tumblr.com/image/140248102760> Tis the cover for this book :D

 

 


	27. Axel: Aw… a Prophecy? You Shouldn’t Have… No Really, Take It Back

 

            Axel promised Pax no more of their friends would die, and definitely no more innocents by their hands. It was a stupid promise. He knew that. They weren’t in a line of work sparse on casualties, neither in the godly world nor mortal one. Eventually, someone else would fall, but he was going to try his hardest to assure it wouldn’t be Rachel.

            He commanded everyone to get back into the van. He’d gotten enough of a nap in during Kally’s watch to be able to drive. Plus, the sheer terror of hearing Kally shout about Pax’s allergic reaction—that gave him more energy than mugging the Energizer bunny.

            Kally and Will sang over Rachel for the entire ride. None of it seemed to work. She quivered under their grip. They were getting exhausted. Nonstop singing—yea, it sounded like a cute Disney musical, but left both of them drained. Kally was untrained. Even though Will was known as the best healer in Camp Half-Blood, he was exhausted from healing everyone earlier.

            Despite his worry for Rachel, Axel was glad Kally had a distraction. He’d done what he could to salvage the situation for Pax, but his little brother’s carelessness would take more than one conversation to fix. Axel needed it fixed though. Kally was an excellent excuse to trick Pax into staying at the camp.

            Other than the singing, the van was silent. Axel was better at pre-battle moral. Pax was better at the aftermath, but he wasn’t exactly in a sunshine and rainbows mood. Plus, the Pax brothers now knew there were dead people chilling out in their mobile home, probably staring at them. That was enough to kill the life of any party, except maybe a Halloween party.

            Only one cop pulled him over for speeding this time. Once, on one of Pax’s birthdays, he’d convinced Alabaster to join him in saying, “These are not the half-bloods you’re looking for,” with a wave of the hand and a wave of the Mist. It had worked and left Pax giggling for ten minutes afterwards.

            This time, he said a simple, “A hundred and twenty miles an hour, Sir? Are you sure? Look again.”

            They left a confused, apologetic cop in the dust.

            Getting close to camp didn’t take long. When Axel recognized the area they’d run into the Silver Festus, he glanced in the rearview mirror at Euna and Calex. They sat on a bench together. Euna leaned her head between several weapons. Calex stared anxiously down to where Kally and Will were singing on the floor, voices hoarse.

            “Calex,” Axel said. The child of Eros glanced up warily. “As soon as we get to camp, I need you to run ahead to Chiron. Pax tells me there are sometimes harpies or campers on patrol. He also said you’re a fast runner. Make sure no patrols bother us and that Chiron is ready to heal once we get to the Big House.”

            He didn’t ask if Calex could do this. There wasn’t an option.

            Calex nodded, “I’ve had experience with the harpies.”

            “Euna.”

            She jerked her eyes open, startled.

            “Follow after him. Check on Joey. I want to know if she has the same malady as Rachel—if this is something Phobetor or Python did to anyone still unconscious from the fight. Report back to the Big House with how she’s doing.” He thought this unlikely, but wanted to cover all possibilities.

            “Okay,” Euna agreed.

            “What do I do?” Pax asked weakly. From the corner of his gaze, Axel could tell Pax still had on an aviator jacket, skull shirt, and had two black eyes. That apple wasn’t fading quickly.

            Axel cracked a smile. This was a joke from Camp Othrys. As Pax was the head of the Sabotage unit, once the fighting stopped and they were far from the enemy, if Pax had to do something, it meant he hadn’t done his job properly in the first place.

            Normally, he’d tell Pax to make Alabaster or Luke uncomfortable.

            “Stay fierce,” he said instead.

            Pax barred his teeth—Nico’s teeth—and made the most monotonous, “Rawr,” he could manage.

 

* * *

 

            They parked in the same spot they’d crashed before, everyone hopping out quickly.  Calex and Euna took off. Will tried to pick up Rachel but almost collapsed. The healer had completely depleted himself and needed Nico’s help to stand. Kally wavered when she got out.

            As Pax reached to help her, his jacket shimmered back into a duster. His right eye flickered back to a brilliant hazel.

            Axel was relieved they wouldn’t be walking into camp with two Nicos. It would decrease the number of questions. Without a thought, Axel went to the back of the van.

            When Axel went to lift Rachel off the van floor, she felt icy to the touch. Enough people had gone from living bodies to inanimate piles of flesh in his arms—her chill made him pop his cheeks in anxiety. If she hadn’t been violently shaking and whimpering, he’d have thought she was already dead.

            By the time Axel looked up from Rachel, Calex was inside the camp’s boundaries. He was so quick, all Axel could see was the blur of white on his beanie. Hopefully, he could sprint past the harpies fast enough to avoid a conflict.

            Although he doubted it would do much, Axel paused a moment to wrap Rachel tightly in their heaviest blanket. As Will didn’t protest the extra action, Axel guessed the attempt at warmth was about as good as any other guesses they had.

            “Let’s get her to the infirmary in the Big House. Chiron might know what’s wrong with her,” Will whispered. His voice was hoarse. The similarity to Jack’s left Axel feeling nostalgic.

            They started forward. At first, Axel thought he’d be fine. They had a mission. They completed their mission. But he could see the barrier as clearly as Zeus’s infidelity.

            The Mist curled around it, making the barricade shimmer like translucent Jell-O in the sparse moonlight. Best case scenario: he’d walk into it, and he’d bounce backwards like he’d jumped horizontally into a trampoline.

            Axel hesitated when he felt the resistance. Although he couldn’t see anything but the shadow of Thalia’s tree, his eyes trailed to where Peleus the dragon lurked.

            “What’s wrong?” Kally asked. She noticed before anyone else that Axel had stopped.

            Will, Nico, and she were already inside the camp’s territory. She’d managed mostly on her own, only needing to grab Pax’s arm a few times for balance.

            Pax touched Axel’s shoulder as he walked past and continued through the boundary. “It’s okay,” he said with a reassuring smile. Once Pax’s feet were firmly planted on Camp Half-Blood territory, he turned to face Axel.

            Resentment flared inside of Axel. He tried to choke it down, but he recognized the joy on Pax’s face too well: he _wanted_ to show Axel he was wrong, that it could work, that they could be happily frolicking around and worshipping the selfish, sadistic monsters that dared to call themselves gods. 

_Rachel is more important_ , he told himself. But he’d already felt his jaw lock in fury.

            “I formerly invite you, Axel Pax, to enter Camp Half-Blood,” Pax said.

            Axel took the step, fully expecting to slam right into a solid wall. In preparation, he cradled Rachel into him. The last thing she needed was to be thrown from his grip.

            Nothing happened.

            His next step landed.

            Axel didn’t realize it until then, but he was shivering.

_That_ shouldn’t have worked.

            Another step.

            When he realized Nico’s eyes were narrowed in suspicion and Will was antsy to get Rachel inside, he quickened his pace.

            “Where’s the infirmary?” he asked, trying to ignore the utter jubilation his little brother was experiencing. He wanted to snap, _this changes nothing_ , but knew this wasn’t the time. And knew that it wasn’t true.

            Kally glanced between them in wary confusion.

            “The Big House,” Will repeated. “It isn’t far now.”

            There weren’t any campers out. No harpies either. Stepping across the sand of a volleyball court, Axel began to understand how much he’d mistook Camp Half-Blood. The last time he’d been here, he’d dodged through the barrier using the Labyrinth, leading Luke’s army into what they thought would be a weak entrance. None of it mattered now, but he still regretted not having Pax lead reconnaissance on that mission.

            A year ago, Axel would think someone an idiot if they suggested he would one day walk into Camp Half-Blood to save one of their own—a mortal no less. He would have scoffed at the absurdity of the situation. Then again, he would have also never believed Aphrodite would make it into his top five women, standing close beside Reyna Ramírez-Arellano and Queen Boudicca. 

            Despite any delusions his little brother had, Axel _knew_ he couldn’t go into the Big House, not with _who_ and _what_ was inside. Fortunately, as they approached the well-lit porch, he could make out the outline of a centaur and one other. Axel could hand Rachel off to one of them and wait outside, probably outside the camp boundaries.

            Chiron and Calex went to meet them.

            As soon as they were within ten feet of Chiron’s nervous clopping, Rachel seized Axel’s shirt.

            Surprise stunned him. Someone as sickly and frail as she’d been moments ago shouldn’t have been that strong. Her nails clawed across his chest like jagged iron poles. Her quiet whimpers were replaced with gagging.

            She choked.

            “Set her down!” Chiron commanded, trotting closer.

            Axel obliged, or tried. Although he managed to set her legs onto the ground, she had a solid grip on his shirt.

            “What is _that_?!” Nico hissed. He and Will rushed to either side. Even with Axel’s ability to see through the Mist, he couldn’t identify what Nico was talking about. Once Nico dropped to her side, he snarled, “ ** _Be gone!_** ” like he could scare her sickness away.

            For a moment, Rachel’s gasping eased.

            Then she doubled over, releasing Axel.

            At first, Axel thought the color was draining out of her hair. After narrowing his eyes, he could see black wisps of smoke enveloping her. A soft chorus of murmurs chattered all around them. 

            When Nico reached out a hand to touch her, Rachel threw her head back. In place of her eyes were shadows. She shot to her feet, blanket crumpling around her. As though the beautiful Oracle had gone through rapid decay, the skin on her face stained against her bones.

            As she spoke, the murmurs unified into a whisper, preceding and echoing her words like the rumble of the tide:

                        “ _Seven without a satyr,_

_By vice and sin, called traitor,_

_Cursed by boar, cursed by a dove,_

_Trails of Psyche lead by love,_

_Web of lies, kept by an oath._

_Growth by death and death by growth,_

_Orpheus’ head, won by heart’s loss._

_Darkness’ end: peace or chaos.”_        

            At the last words, Rachel would have collapsed had Axel not caught her. The rumble of whispers extinguished. The smoke dissipated. Although everything else returned to normal, Rachel’s skin felt fiery.

            She blinked weakly up at Axel. Although her flesh no longer looked gaunt, her lips were parched. Her breathe rattled like Pax had dropped a cat toy down there. “Who—who are you?” she asked.

            Her voice quivered with fear and pain, something he was accustomed to, though not from someone he wanted to help. Her eyes flicked to his ears, his eyes, and his mouth. “ _What_ are you?” she whispered.

            Will popped his head close by, pressing his hand to Rachel’s head. “Rachel, it’s me. You’re safe. You’re at Camp Half-Blood.”

            Her expression didn’t ease. She trembled. Axel went to sit her on the porch of the Big House. As he released her, she hugged herself. “I feel gross,” she whispered. “Like… something isn’t right. What happened?”

            “What happened indeed.”

            The angry voice came from behind them.

            Hovering about ten feet off the ground, Apollo glowered down. Other than the whole levitation thing, he looked like a normal, annoyed teenager, sitting cross-legged with his arms folded. Axel watched Kally’s expression go slack. Maybe he shouldn’t have after the events of the night, but Pax slipped her hand into his for support.

            “You,” Apollo pointed at Axel. “You’ve caused problems before. Do you have any idea how hard it is to come by an Oracle? Not only did she get kidnapped, but she got Oracle-jacked and now Dad is going to blame that prophecy on _me_. Me!” he repeated, like he liked the sound of the word. “Me and this perfect, perfect face.” He counted the syllables for ‘perfect face’ before shaking his head and scowling at Axel. “You were probably involved in this. I would kill you if I had more time. It would make me feel better!”

            Axel knew, innately, that Pax was going to say something that would get both of them eviscerated. Not that he would normally mind if his brother insulted a god, but Axel knew they were too far into enemy territory to be picking fights and he didn’t want his brother to die.

            But Apollo poofed before Pax could form the first word. Instead of insulting Apollo, like Axel expected, Pax babbled, “No—no—no—no! You take that back, Oracle! You take that back right now! Prophecies are bad news!  That means we’re heroes and I’m _super_ not okay with that!”                         

            None of the others seemed to know how to react. Everyone from Howe Cavern was too exhausted and overwhelmed to form a thought on the matter.

            Nico sat beside Rachel to put a hand on her shoulder. “That was the Nekyomanteia. You feel wrong because you were possessed by another Oracle.”

            “The Oracle of the Dead,” Chiron affirmed gravely.

            If Axel could commission Pax to craft a quick, _thank-you-Captain-Obvious-hat,_ he would have given it to Chiron. As he had often since he’d grown to know more about the Greek demigods, he wondered if they won the Second Titan War off of shear dumb luck.

            “Why…” Kally swallowed, recovering quicker from her father than Axel would have suspected she could. She pulled her hand from Pax. “Why would the Oracle of Dead take the Oracle of Delphi’s host? Doesn’t it have its own?”

            Nico shook his head. “Not since the Romans looted the Necromateion in the second century. I wonder if Frank could have disturbed it when he woke the Roman ghosts…”

            “Necromateion?” Will asked.

            “House of Hades,” Nico clarified.

            Although Axel and Pax had been less informed since the end of the Second Titan War, they saw enough of their monster friends to know the Doors of Death had reversed the flow of the dead for awhile. Plus, Grover mentioned the incident on the ride to Camp Half-Blood. Judging from the serious glance that passed between Will, Nico, and Chiron, the satyr had left out a lot of details.

            Chiron suggested Calex put Rachel into the infirmary. Will and Nico followed after. The prophecy and the manner in which it was delivered disturbed the centaur enough to overlook Axel for several minutes. Axel preferred it that way. He’d never intended—nor thought it possible—to enter camp, but he also hadn’t planned for Rachel to have a moment from _The Exorcist_.

            Axel was about to walk back towards the Pax van when Chiron’s gaze fell to him. “You must be Axel,” he said, “The Seventh new camper.” His voice was wistful enough that Axel wondered if the centaur knew exactly who he was. Axel tensed, wondering if he could take the “ _trainer of heroes_ ” long enough for Pax to get away.

            But Chiron merely shook his head sadly. “What are we going to do with you?”

 

* * *

 

            The argument about where to spend the night lasted about as long as it would take a marshmallow to escape the clutches of Tantalus. “One night,” Axel agreed after Pax gave him puppy eyes for two minutes. Really, he wanted to be close by if any updates came around about Rachel. He also wanted to make sure Pax didn’t try to sneak into Kally’s cabin to apologize to her, as that would likely start a fight.

            After they got Rachel inside the Big House, Will demanded Kally and Nico go back to Cabin Seven for rest. Kally, because she looked exhausted after her supernova blast earlier and all that sing-healing. Nico, because Will wanted to make sure Pax’s dart didn’t have an adverse aftereffects… or so he said.

            Chiron assured them he would look after Rachel for the night—they could tell everyone about her in the morning. Axel was incredibly relieved that the centaur didn’t make any mention of his scent. He assumed—as it often was—that Pax’s smell was strong enough to cover both of theirs.

            Euna dutifully informed Axel that Joey was fine, just asleep. He and Chiron sent her straight back to bed, knowing they’d go over everything in the morning.

            Everyone was asleep in—as Pax fondly referred to it—the thieves’ cabin. Axel enjoyed its rustic simplicity. If he had to gag down the hospitality of any of the gods, he’d prefer Luke’s father. At least Hermes hadn’t cursed him yet, or sent monsters to kill him., or killed any of his friends. There were a few times, when Alabaster, Pax and he were out on missions that Hermes sneaked a conversation with Axel to ask about his son.  If anything, the god had been respectful and—by comparison to any other god—humble. Axel was disappointed neither he nor Prometheus could convince Hermes to join Kronos’ side.

            Connor Stoll woke up long enough to allot Axel a section of the floor beside Pax’s imaginary section of the floor. He shoved a sleeping bag Axel’s way before collapsing back into his bunk.

            Pax collapsed as soon as he had his bedroll out.

            Axel knew he wouldn’t be able to make himself sleep. There was a lot to plan and Axel couldn’t wake up here with a nightmare.  Every time he thought about their location, that he was _letting_ himself stay here, anger threatened to overtake him. Humiliation made him want to storm back to the Pax van. He tried to focus on the next steps instead.

            All they needed from Camp Half-Blood was the Golden Net and some form of rapid transport from the Hephaestus campers. That prophecy put a new chess piece into play, though Axel couldn’t tell if it was a favorable one. They had received prophecies from Themis[1] before, but nothing like that.

_Cursed by boar, cursed by a dove,_

            That referred to him, but the seven traitors… He and Pax betrayed Santiago, and Pax definitely betrayed Olympus. In what capacity were Calex, Euna, Joey, Kally and—he assumed—Merry traitors? Already, he didn’t want Pax coming with him. He wanted his little brother to be living in the comfort of Camp Half-Blood, knowing he would always have a meal, knowing Santiago shouldn’t be able to catch him here. But having to keep six people safe? To do, what? The Trials of Psyche?

            Axel sighed.

            Then felt the touch of a woman’s hand on his lips and inhaled the smell of roses. He lost consciousness.

 

* * *

 

[1] Prophetic titaness of law and divine order


	28. Ajax: Mom, Really, Why Are You a Jar?

 

 

          Despite everything that went wrong that night—getting an unwanted prophecy, messing everything up with Kally, forgetting to leave dead treats for Hunnie and Baller in the van for whenever those slackers showed up again—Pax knew he could sleep happily with the pleasant surprise of his brother’s company.

          He _never_ thought Axel would agree to come in. He had hoped, and he’d actually prayed to whichever gods he could think of that didn’t have a vendetta against them, but he’d never actually expected it to work.

          Tomorrow would have to go perfectly. He’d have to show off the camp in all its glory, to emphasize that Reyna would come through every so often, that Axel could pummel Jason Grace and Percy Jackson in sword training _every day_.

          He drifted off with the happy thought of Jason Grace literally flying through the air after one of Axel’s punches.[1]

          When Pax didn’t see the Leonis Caput in his dreams, he wanted to click his heels in excitement and do an intricate victory dance. _Thank you world for ending on so many suspiciously good thoughts!_

After his and Phobetor’s encounter, he was pretty sure Phobetor intended to continue tormenting them, but Pax wasn’t about to call up his cousin on the pray phone and say, _“Hey, slacker, you forgot to scare me_. _Augh—no wonder Hypnos likes Morpheus more._ ”

          Fear vanquished his sense of victory.

          Instead of being alone in the Labyrinth with the Leonis Caput, he was in a throne room, one he’d been in many times before. The throne was made out of human bones, bound together by the victim’s tendons. Torches lined the walls but only one was lit, casting a dim light onto a man sitting on the throne. A cane leaned against the grotesque chair.

          Pax trembled.

          The middle-aged man wore a burgundy suit. His hair was dark, chin length, and slicked back. His fingers clicked impatiently against the metal of the cane’s grip.

          In front of the man was a simple Greek vase atop an altar: a pithos.

          Pax tried to remind himself this was only a dream, that any minute a giant rabbit could rip open the ceiling and wreak rabbity havoc on the inhabitants. Still, he whimpered when the man spoke.

          “He’ll bring it to me,” the man stated, as though repeating for clarity. A devilish smile crept along his lips. “And it can capture _any_ deity?”

          If that rabbit would have attacked right then and there, Pax would have been happy. Then he’d know this was in fact a joke from Phobetor, instead of another batch of passive eavesdropping--and everyone knew how he felt about passive eavesdropping. Then, he’d know this wasn’t actually happening.

          A malicious laugh resonated from the pithos, like, inside, there was a Joker action figure that had gained Mark Hamill’s vocal cords. “Oh, Santiago,” a woman’s deep voice cooed from within, “Already planning to use my ploys against me?”

          “One day, you won’t be able to leave,” Santiago mused. Although the smile remained on his lips, Pax cowered at his tone. That was the tone Pax had learned not to contradict. “Until then, I look forward to having the family reunited. Do you think Ajax suspects anything?”

          Pax almost choked.

          Until those words, he could pretend this was a conversation completely unrelated to him and just some… weird date his parents were having… with his mom as a jar—he didn’t know what goddesses were into and frankly he didn’t want to know that about his mother. Upon realizing this was about him, he wondered if he could send a quick shadow puppet SOS to any nearby children of Hypnos or any Sexy Goth Princes.

          “He’d have to hear it with his own two ears to be suspicious,” she said. Pax could swear two eyes formed on the back of the pithos to wink at him. They vanished. As if he needed a goddess to say his dad was doing evil things. He already knew his dad was _always_ doing something random and evil. “He trusts the Leonis Caput too much. But Hecates charms on the helmet are failing. Axel will slowly start to lose his sanity. He’ll bring it straight to you.” Clapping, like an excited school girl, echoed about the room.

          Santiago glowered. “I raised Axel to be strong. Do not underestimate him.”

          “So proud of your children,” the pithos cooed. “That’s why I like you little Paxes. You’re a challenge to crush. Thinking yourselves too proud for envy. Too tenacious for despair.” Pax disagreed with both of those assessments, but wasn’t sure if he could talk in this dream and wouldn’t if he could. Though Axel wouldn’t go crazy. He _was_ too tenacious for that and Pax wouldn’t let that happen. “They received a prophecy. Even if most of the gods aren’t sure if they’ll acknowledge it as one, they’re watching them. Phobetor’s brothers will start to notice that he’s monopolizing the nightmares of the campers.”

          Santiago snorted. “They’ll think it a stunt for attention. He’s known for those.”

          Another manic laugh from the pithos. “ Yes—yes! Another child merely seeking attention from his parent. The campers want more attention from their parents, to be appreciated. You know how important it is for people to appreciate their children. We will help them.”

          Santiago picked up his cane and stood.  He took two steps towards a torch, to a portrait barely visible in the lighting. Pax hated that photo. It was a family portrait, one taken only days after Uncle Frasco and Aunt Nilley died. Santiago had shoved all of them into suits and Lapis into a dress. He’d convinced Kouta to gel all the boys’ hair back and tie Lapis’ with a ribbon. Axel’s face was still swollen and his arm was in a caste.

          Santiago touched the frame.

          “Yes,” he agreed with the pithos. “They’ll learn. You appreciate children most when they’re gone.”

 

* * *

 

 

Thank you all very much for reading the first book of the _Traitors of Olympus_ series: _Whispers of a Snake_! It’s been an exciting adventure with all of you. I would love to hear what you think in comments or reviews! Your support makes this book (and this series) possible. If you enjoyed this series, the second book, _Blood of a Mayan_ , is already out along with a few short stories.

Thank you again for reading!

 

A quick explanation of this work: before I started this series, I got a nasty concussion. I had a real fear that I wouldn’t be able to read or write again. Concussions already cause depression and suicidal tendencies, so—when my doctor told me not to do my life’s passion—it got rough for awhile. That’s around when I got into the _Percy Jackson_ audiobook series. Those and the _Heroes of Olympus_ audiobooks helped pull me through, and I can’t thank Riordan enough for that. Even better, it kick started my creative streak. Within days of finishing _The Blood of Olympus,_ Kally and the Pax brothers were characters (though Kally’s original name was Cassandra and Axel and Ajax had different mothers. Things change so fast in writing!) Although I have never written a full fanfiction like this, I’m hoping to finish it as a little homage to Riordan, mirroring his five book pattern. Thanks again for going through the adventure with me!

 

Lastly, the biggest thanks to my friend and editor Mel. I know I’ve said it before dude, but this book would have never gotten done without your love and support… And your sexy sketches of the Pax brothers that I hope you’ll one day let me post on my Tumblr.    

 

* * *

 

[1] Imagine Jason agreeing to do this for one of Pax’s birthdays. Axel (or someone) stagepunching Jason and Jason literally just flings himself like, 20 feet up. Pax would cry from happiness and Jason and Axel would just agree to make a stage performance of this from here on out.


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